In Pennsylvania, there is a law which explicitly grants that grandparents may seek partial custody/visitation rights in cases when their child has died. There is also a law which says that a parent who shares custody of a child can seek to prohibit the other parent from moving a great distance away with the child.
However, no court has ever held that a grandparent had standing to prevent a move even if they had been granted partial custody in place of a dead child. The grandparents in the Miller v. Miller case are hoping to change that. The mother is clearly relying upon this precedent to have this case found in her favor.
There has been no order for evaluations at this time. The injunction was granted in a preliminary hearing, any such order would have to come in a future hearing. Personally, I doubt that it will come to that.
I say that because I’m leaning toward the grandparents’ allegations being simply fodder for their useless case. They’re making lots of allegations, trying to make her look as bad as possible in order to paint themselves as a “stable” influence in this child’s life. (Not dissimilar to the way divorced parents desperately try to tear one another down in custody disputes.) But if they really believed the litany of troubling things that they’ve claimed about the mother, there would be no reason why they wouldn’t be pressing for full custody. If they are to be believed, she’s beyond unstable and she wants to deprive the child of any connection to any of his family, especially the grandparents who practically raised him.*
(*Until the child’s father became ill and the mother stopped working, the grandparents babysat him three days each week. After the father’s death, the child spent one day and one overnight with the grandparents each week. Now, in addition to the injunction prohibiting the mother from moving, the grandparents have been granted visitation for 72 straight hours every other week. I cannot begin to imagine what kind of trauma it would be for a three year old to be away from his mother for that period of time unexpectedly and in a time of such upheaval in his young life.)
I heard the mother, her attorney and a member of the Miller family (grandparent sympathizer) on the radio a couple of days ago (I was back in Pittsburgh for a couple of days and still didn’t get a chance to meet Guin or cjhoworth, grr grr grr) and it stood out that the mother and her attorney (who were on-air separately) were very interested in simply stating her case, including the fact that she’s made a number of suggestions of ways in which the relationship between the child and his grandparents can be maintained despite the distance. (Monthly visits, several weeks during summer, unlimited phone calls, installation of DSL to facilitate live webcam chatting and so on.) The only time she made any judgments about the grandparents at all was to describe the grandmother as a “homebody” who liked to stay at home and wouldn’t be very happy if she had to travel to North Carolina, even in order to visit with the child.
Meanwhile, the family member who called in immediately went on the offensive, suggesting that not only is the mother mentally off, she had also done all kinds of unacceptable, uncouth things – including committing adultery while her husband lay dying in the hospital, with a man whose wife was also terminally ill. He also insinuated that her new fiance was a man she met (altogether too soon after her husband died – never said but strongly implied) in a cybersex chatroom.
I gathered strongly that in this particular case, the grandparents simply want their way. They disapprove of the mother’s decision to get on with her life, they don’t want to travel to see the child, they don’t like the mother’s morals and they’re willing to use the courts and trample her name in public in order to get what they want. The best interests of the child aren’t even in consideration.
Sorry, did I rant?:rolleyes:
It was the most saddest thing. I still resent my parents to this day for not letting us kids have our time with him. It still cuts like a knife even after all these years.