Grandparents are permitted by law to seek access to their grandchildren under certain circumstances. These laws vary by state; in New York, grandparent rights are enumerated in Section 72 of the Domestic Relations Law (DRL). The statute was enacted due to the belief that grandparents can play an important role in, and can have a resoundingly positive influence on, the lives of their grandchildren. As a result, the issue of grandparent rights can, to outside appearances, seem wholesome and simple.
While there are certainly cases in which this statute preserves and protects valuable relationships between family members, left open as it currently is, the statute also creates a mechanism for actors with objectionable or ill-conceived motives—whether benign and due to mental illness or malignant in the case of abusers—to leverage the court system and inflict pain upon their children and grandchildren.
