INTRODUCED BY REP. JAMES ALBIS, PROPOSED BILL NO. 6481,TO EXPAND GRANDPARENT'S RIGHTS IN CUSTODY MATTERS!

General Assembly		Proposed Bill No. 6481
January Session, 2015		LCO No. 832
		*00832*
Referred to Committee on JUDICIARY
Introduced by:
REP. ALBIS, 99th Dist.

AN ACT CONCERNING A GRANDPARENT'S RIGHT TO VISITATION WITH HIS OR HER GRANDCHILD.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:

That section 46b-59 of the general statutes be amended to provide that there shall be a rebuttable presumption that a grandparent is entitled to a right to visitation with his or her grandchild.

Statement of Purpose:
To expand a grandparent's right to visitation with his or her grandchild.

THE UNSUNG VICTIMS: GRANDPARENTS

It is really bad when you end up in a high conflict divorce.  It's bad for you and it is bad for your kids.  But these are not the only victims of a high conflict divorce.  Another group of victims in a high conflict divorce are the grandparents, your parents.  


If we were disappointed at the outcome of our marriage, the loss of hope, the loss of expectations, the loss of security both financial and emotional, the loss of faith in our legal system and in the mental health system, how much more so are our parents going to feel these things as they watch what we are going through.  


What is worse for many grandparents in this situation is that they have absolutely no standing in court and they are literally helpless to act in response to the abuses they see going on in front of them, abuses to their daughters and grandchildren for which there is no remedy.  


What I see as the worst problem here is that many grandparents are called upon to contribute financially to assist their daughters who are trapped in high conflict divorces, and yet the fact that they support their daughters could ultimately undermine their attempts to help.  On the one hand, if there are parents with sufficient money, lawyers will calculate into their plans for obtaining child support and alimony, particularly during the pendente lite period, the assumption that grandparents can act as fall back support should their daughters run out of money.  Furthermore, if the opposing attorney and/or the court come to believe that there are grandparents with money standing behind their daughters, they will assume that there is little need for child support and alimony because they can simply rely on grandparents to provide it.  As a result, women who have parents who support them in significant ways financially will find themselves barred from obtaining fair and equitable financial settlements.  


On the other hand, they can withhold financial support to convince the attorneys and the court how important it is to ensure their daughters receive fair and just financial settlements, but then these women won't be able to pay for food, housing, or legal expenses necessary to make it through the pendente lite period intact.  


However, if they provide the support, it will look as though they have endless money bags to provide their daughters and that, consequently, the ex husband does not need to make any reasonable contribution. Lawyers will often continue to litigate a divorce until they have gone through all the daughters' financial resources and that of the grandparents as well.  Then they settle--badly.


Without decent financial settlements, women in high conflict divorces as well as their children end up having to rely on grandparents for substantial financial support for years after the divorce.  But how many grandparents can truly afford to provide that kind of financial support over a long period of time?


When grandparents see their daughters in a situation where they can't feed or house their grandchildren because of a lack of money, and when they see that their daughters may lose custody because they can't pay their lawyers, then they empty out their bank accounts trying to come to their children and grandchildren's aid, many at a time when they desperately need that money for their retirement.  It is a brutal catch 22.   


If their daughters lose custody of the children, these grandparents may never have the opportunity to see their grandchildren again, because they have no legal rights, and they have even less ability to influence an ex husband who is hell bent on eliminating the mother from the lives of the children and in eliminating the mother inevitably eliminate the grandparents as well.  


What a way to spend your old age, living with a daily tragedy, the loss of access to your grandchildren, and the daily observation of how your former son in law tortures your child.  And you are too old and you no longer have the pull to do anything about it.  


Yes, there is much that grandparents can do to support their children and grandchildren.  They can speak to the custody evaluator and the GAL in support of their daughter.  They can provide a supportive presence in court by sitting and watching the court proceedings and they can express the faith they have in their child on a frequent basis.  Such actions do have an influence for the better in the end.


However, watching a daughter go through a high conflict divorce is a very traumatic experience for any grandparents to go through and the scars, both emotional and financial, often endure for a long time afterwards.