Grandparents should have access to see grandchildren, say lawyers

Coventry and Warwickshire Law firm Alsters Kelley is backing calls for greater rights for grandparents after family separation, divorce or bereavement.

Partner Teresa Mannion says it is bizarre and illogical that stepparents automatically have a right to apply to see children in such circumstances while grandparents, who have a biological link to their grandchildren, have to seek a court order, often at great personal expense, to do so.

Research published by an alliance of pressure groups reveals that almost half of grandparents lose all contact with their grandchildren after a family separation, bereavement or divorce.

The report, entitled Beyond the Nuclear, found that 42 per cent never see their grandchildren again after a break-up. More than two in three are prevented from providing any sort of childcare or taking their grandchildren on outings, even when they had done so regularly in the past.

Those whose sons are involved in the split fare worse. Only a third of paternal grandparents said that they still felt close to their grandchildren after separation, compared with two thirds of maternal grandparents.

Teresa Mannion and her team currently have more than a dozen such cases in which grandparents want to maintain access on their books. She said: "There is compelling evidence that children fare better if they keep in touch with their grandparents but neither party has an automatic right to enforce this. In contrast, the Children Act, passed two decades ago, cemented in law the right of stepparents to maintain contact if they lived as part of the family for three years.

"Grandparents have the added difficulty of not being able to get public funding, previously Legal Aid, for any court action so they face having to find ways of funding the actions themselves and, for the majority, that is not easy.

"It is time for grandparents to achieve legal parity, if not a higher priority than stepparents. After all, how many fairy tales feature a wicked grandparent compared with the number with wicked stepmothers? Grandparents generally have more time for their grandchildren and devote long hours to helping them develop.”

"Parents can be notoriously self-centred when it comes to family break-up but they should consider the impact on a child when a relationship fails. Why should the child and grandparents be punished for the parents’ relationship breakdown? It is time to put this anomaly right.”