New grandparent visitation bill passes in Alabama Legislature

[queenlily]

The Alabama Legislature on Wednesday passed a new bill that would give some grandparents the right to see their grandchildren, about five years after a similar law was deemed unconstitutional.This year's legislation, sponsored by Rep. Mike Jones, R-Andalusia, repeals the Alabama Grandparents Visitation Act, which was enacted in 2010

Comments

[calendae]

Leaving this link here.

[queenlily]

Thank you, calendae. This is everything that makes me side-eye this law. This sums it up:

"it also brings out the people who think they have more rights over their grandchildren than the children's own parents do, the people who want to force a family reconciliation through the courts, the people who want to take custody of their grandchildren to punish their children. These people are not merely nasty pieces of work. These people are batshit."

ETA: I'm still reading that site. It's so insightful.

[ladycyndra]

I also thank you for posting this link. Holy FUCK are those people disgusting and beyond scary. They are so fucked up that they cant see how fucked up they are due to being covered in absolute bullshit.

[meadowphoenix]

if one of both of the parents' parental rights were terminated

I could actually understand petitioning in this situation, since usually if the parent was no good for the child then that parent's relatives are more likely to have stepped in

but

f the children's parents have filed for divorce; or if the children were born out of wedlock
Not sure what the difference these situations make. Seems like morality policing.

[queenlily]

I don't know much, but it seems like if the parents' parental rights were terminated, meaning the child needed to be adopted or enter foster care, then there would already be a system set up giving family first dibs on the child without this law.

That is definitely morality policing.

[meadowphoenix]

Well there's likely no system set up. Like incredibly unlikely. But generally judges feel that family members having custody is in the best interest of the child, which is the main legal standard.

But this gets complicated when only one parent's rights get terminated and that parent's family was taking care of the kid. The other parent can sue for custody it becomes very complicated. Also, sometimes you have situations where the parent is not in a mentally or physically healthy situation and neither are the family members around them, but family members around them will get temporary custody at first and after that it's hard for anyone else to get custody then without a lot of evidence. If my grandparents had been able to sue for custody after my little cousin's mom died, as a right, then we might have been able to avoid 6 years of abuse and neglect to my cousin.

So I could definitely see how a law might inarticulately try to cover those situations, although the other ones are bullshit.

[queenlily]

Ugh. I'm sorry for your cousin. I hope he/she is doing okay now.

Yeah, some system should be in place to prevent that while retaining a parent's right to parent. More funding to CPS?

[amyura]

Here's the thing about parental rights being terminated. That almost NEVER happens overnight. The kids are placed in foster care, and every attempt is made to keep the kids with a family member first. So I really don't get what stopped the grandparents, while all of this was happening, from applying to be foster parents/legal guardians themselves, through normal channels. Doing it after the fact seems spiteful and really sketchy to me.

Divorcing or never-married parents? Total morality policing. Not cool.

In short, no, nobody has a RIGHT to a child.

[fenchurchly]

Because in some causes only one of the parent's rights is terminated (i.e. just the father, but the mother retains full rights/custody).

[omimouse]

There is no way I can possibly go into full detail on our own experiences in this general arena (read: Our two years in fucking Hell) so I'm gonna try and sum up