Grandparents Lose Another Visitation Case

April 19, 2002 - The ruling yesterday by the Illinois Supreme Court overturned two trial court decisions in which grandparents earlier successfully sued single, surviving parents for more visits with a grandchild. Some say the Illinois "grandparents visitation" law was totally struck down, while others say only parts of it were eliminated.

Clearly, the court ruled that parents have full authority to raise their children unless their health or safety is in danger.

The ruling in the two cases involved parents whose spouses had died and the parents did not deny grandparents visitation but insisted that the children not spend the night at the grandparents' homes. In one case, the surviving father would drive his daughter to visit her grandmother, who lived 50 minutes away, and in the other the grandparents baby-sat their two grandchildren one night a week at the children's home, according to a report by UPI.

One case involved Paul Michael Byrne, a widower whose former mother-in-law won a lawsuit for longer, unsupervised time with his daughter.

In 2000, the state Supreme Court ruled that the law -- which gave grandparents the right to sue -- was unconstitutional when both parents were alive to decide whether to let children visit. But the court left open the question of what was allowed when one parent was dead and the other wanted to limit visits.

The court said it recognized the benefits of the "intergenerational relationship" between children and their grandparents. But in cases where a parent is deemed constitutionally fit, it is in the children's best interests that "parents, not judges, should be the ones to decide with whom their children will and will not associate."

The sections of the law overturned by the court put parents on equal footing with the petitioning party and narrowly defined who can petition for visitation.