Texas Grandparents Rights Attorney

Helping Grandparents Across Eastern and Northern Texas Protect Their Grandchildren

As the rates of divorce, unwed parents, and a variety of societal problems increase, so do the complexities of family relationships. Increasingly, grandparents are playing a more active role in the raising and caretaking of their grandchildren.

Unfortunately, estrangement between divorced parents sometimes leads to grandparents being denied access to or visitation with their grandchildren. While parents do have the right to choose who their children spend time with, the decision is often made arbitrarily and without relation to the grandparent's caregiving skills or the best interest of the children. Sometimes access is denied as an indirect way of getting back at a former spouse by attacking their parents.

In other cases, grandparents are given informal custody over their grandchildren when parents are unable, or unfit, to care for them. Unfortunately, informal child custody arrangements can leave caretakers with few legal rights and limits their legal authority because these informal rights are subject to arbitrary change at the whim of parents.

Siebman, Burg, Phillips & Smith, LLP believes in protecting grandparents' rights to have meaningful, healthy relationships with their grandchildren, and to legal custody of grandchildren in appropriate situations. If you need help seeking visitation with or formalizing legal custody over your grandchildren, SBPS can help. If circumstances require grandparents to step in to protect grandchildren, SBPS can show grandparents the way.

Contact at any of the firm's four offices to schedule a free initial consultation with an experienced local lawyer.

Grandparents' Rights to Visitation With Their Grandchildren

Under Texas law, grandparents' rights are "derivative," which means that a grandparent has no specific legal rights simply by virtue of being a grandparent. Instead, grandparents' rights are said to "flow through their child," meaning that, in ordinary circumstances, a parent has the ultimate right to decide how much access the grandparents will have to grandchildren.

However, grandparents' do have some rights and access to legal remedies under Texas family law. For example, if a parent denies or limits the grandparents' time with the grandchildren, an attorney can file a petition with the courts for increased visitation. Texas courts are required to act in the best interest of the children involved.

Grandparents' Rights to Seek Legal Custody of Their Grandchildren

When grandparents become primary caregivers for their grandchildren, it usually begins as an informal arrangement. This may occur, for example, when a single parent cannot afford daycare or comes into hard times.

Grandparents may take informal custody when one of the parents is serving time in prison or is chemically dependant. When parents are divorcing, in some cases a grandparent might take the grandchildren into their home temporarily.

Many grandparents who are raising their grandchildren informally are doing so because of abuse, neglect or abandonment by the parents. When both parents are absent or unfit, however, an informal custody arrangement is not sufficient. Without legal custody, grandparents are powerless to prevent parents from taking their children back.

Legal custody also provides the essential legal authority needed to make important decisions in the best interest of the children. That authority includes the ability to register children for school, to make health care decisions, and to make other decisions for the child's welfare.

The only way a grandparent can be granted full custody of minor children is if both of the parents' parental rights have been terminated. When that occurs, a grandparent who has provided consistent caregiving, or who has a strong relationship with the children, would have a very good chance of obtaining custody.

In such cases, it is essential to work proactively and build a record that will demonstrate the grandparents' fitness, concerned investment, and commitment to the well being of their grandchildren to the courts.

Contact SBPS for Professional, Caring Family Law Counsel

A grandparent's bond with their grandchildren is unique and should be protected. A strong relationship with a grandparent is also one of the best ways to keep children in the family should their parents be found to be unfit to care for them.

Contact SBPS at any of its four local offices in Sherman, Plano, Lufkin and Marshall to schedule a free initial consultation about grandparents' rights.