Issues of grandparents’ rights to visitation with their grandchildren always hinge on the best interests of the child standard. That is, the Massachusetts Probate and Family Courts will order grandparent visitation only where it is in the best interests of the child to do so. Grandparents may petition the Court for visitation rights; they must prove that standard met in order for the court to award visitation, however.
What happens when a grandparent files an incomplete petition for visitation? The Massachusetts Appeals Court recently decided this issue in the case of Martinez v. Martinez-Cintron.
Background
In that case, the minor child’s parents divorced when the child was about six months old; the mother was awarded sole legal and physical custody. The father received supervised visitation rights.
The paternal grandmother (father’s mother) filed a petition for grandparent visitation, which was also accompanied by a handwritten affidavit. In that petition, the grandmother noted that she did not have an established relationship with the child. However, she stated it was in the child’s best interests for such a relationship to exist. The grandmother offered no supporting evidence for her claims that visitation should be granted.
The mother initially did not oppose the grandmother’s request. Later, however, she filed to amend her Answer and sought to dismiss the grandmother’s claims. At trial, the judge reasoned that the grandmother’s claim did not warrant dismissal. It noted that the court would allow the grandmother “the opportunity to produce evidence that circumstances are severe enough to warrant a court’s review of the parent’s decision to deny visitation.”
Appeal
The mother of the child filed an interlocutory appeal. The Appeals Court reversed; it held that a grandparent’s petition for visitation must be dismissed when the petition does not sufficiently allege why visitation is necessary to protect the child from significant harm.
The Appeals Court looked to the case of Blixt v. Blixt, a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case. The case set forth the pleading requirements for grandparents’ petitions for visitation rights. “We consider the pleading requirements presented in Blixt to be clear: ‘any complaint filed under the statute should be detailed and verified or be accompanied by a detailed and verified affidavit setting out the factual basis relied on by the plaintiffs to justify relief[,]’” the Court noted. Because the grandmother did not meet those pleading requirements, the trial court had to dismiss the grandmother’s petition.
“While we are sympathetic to the grandmother’s efforts to establish a relationship with her grandchild, we are similarly mindful that, absent a showing to the contrary, we presume a fit parent will act in her child’s best interest,” the Court stated. “Absent some extreme circumstance, the proper consideration is whether the grandmother made adequate factual allegations to plausibly suggest, beyond mere speculation, ‘that visitation between grandparent and child is . . . necessary to protect the child from significant harm.’…The grandmother’s affidavit in no way indicated that a failure to order visitation would subject the child to any harm, much less significant harm.”
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