The Coming of Age of Grandparent Visitation Rights
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THE COMING OF AGE OF GRANDPARENT
VISITATION RIGHTS
ANNE MARIE JACKSON
INTRODUCTION
As the nature of the American family changes, family law also
changes.' One rapidly emerging area of family law is the legal right
of grandparents to visit with their grandchildren.2 In response to the
increasing number of unmarried or divorced parents, the existence
of step-families, the estrangement of extended families,' the decrease
1. See Grandparents: The Other Victims of Divorce and Custody Disputes: Hearing Before the
Subcomm. on Human Services of the House Select Comm. on Aging, 97th Cong., 2d Sess. 71 (1982)
[hereinafter 1982 House Hearing] (statement of Dr. Andre Derdeyn, Director, University of
Virginia Child and Family Psychiatry Training Program) (explaining that changes in the field
of child custody and visitation in the United States which have occurred over most of the last
three hundred years have evolved gradually as part of other social changes); see also Ross A.
Thompson et al., Grandparents' Visitation Rights: Legalizing the Ties That Bind, 44 AM. PSYCHOL.
1217, 1217 (1989) (suggesting that policy makers must be careful not to change nature of
families through laws, but merely create laws to accommodate those changes in family life that
have already occurred).
2. See 1982 House Hearing, supra note 1, at 71 (statement of Dr. Andre Derdeyn, Director,
University of Virginia Child and Family Psychiatry Training Program) (noting that grandparent
visitation statutes have burst quite recently upon the scene).
3. See Hicks v. Enlow, 764 S.W.2d 68, 70-71 (Ky. 1989) (explaining that grandparents'
visitation statute was an appropriate response to the change in the demographics of domestic
relations, mirrored by the dramatic increases in the divorce rate and in the number of children
born to unmarried parents, and the increasing independence and alienation within the
extended family inherent in a mobile society); randparents'Rights: Preserving GenerationalBonds:
Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Human Servie of the House Select Comm. on Aging, 102d Cong., 1st
Sess. 3 (1991) [hereinafter 1991 House Hearing] (statement of Rep. Snowe) (noting that soaring
divorce rates, increased family mobility, fractured extended families, and politically active
grandparents with increased life spans have resulted in increased focus on grandparent visitation
laws); Sara S. Rorer, Comment, Grandparents' Vitation Rights in Ohio: A Procedural Quagmire, 56
U. CN. L. REv. 295, 296 (1987) (indicating that grandparent visitation statutes arose in response
to rising divorce rate and changing attitudes about child custody);Joseph L. Galloway & Patricia
A. Avery, America's Forgotten Resource: Grandparents, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REP., Apr. 30, 1984, at
76, 76 (reporting that social changes in recent years, including increased mobility and high](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/aulr43&div=19&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Coming of Age of Grandparent Visitation Rights
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