PORTLAND – The death of a child’s parent doesn’t give the grandparents an automatic right to visitation under the Maine Grandparents Visitation Act, the state supreme court ruled Thursday.
The unanimous ruling in an Aroostook County case further restricts the rights of grandparents to court-ordered visitation in Maine.
State law gives grandparents the right to seek visitation if one of the parents dies, if there is sufficient effort to sustain a relationship, or if there is a “sufficient existing relationship” with one of the grandchildren.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld the constitutionality of the visitation law in 2000 in a case that focused on the latter scenario. The court ruled in favor of grandparents who had raised the children before contact was cut off by the child’s mother.
The court’s ruling on Thursday focuses on the scenario of grandparents seeking contact after the death of one of the parents. Barring additional factors, the death of one parent does not justify overruling the other parent’s wishes, the court said.
“We conclude that the death of one parent in itself is not an urgent reason that justifies forcing the surviving parent into litigation,” Justice Howard Dana wrote.
The 5-year-old child at the center of the dispute lived with her parents on the grandparents’ dairy farm in Littleton for four years. The two families lived in homes that were only 100 feet apart, and they saw each other nearly every day.
But a conflict erupted between Patricia Conlogue and her in-laws after the death of her husband, Kevin, in 2003. Ultimately, Patricia Conlogue moved to Oakland and cut off contact between her daughter and the grandparents, Herschel and Jane Conlogue.
In its ruling, the supreme court said that forcing parents to defend against a grandparents’ claim for visitation is itself an infringement of parents’ fundamental right to make decisions concerning their children.
Thus, grandparents have to give additional reasons for seeking visitation in the event of a parent’s death, the court said.
“We’re pleased with the recognition that the court says that it’s a pretty significant burden to have a widow hauled into court in a situation like this,” said Stephen Nelson, a Houlton lawyer representing the mother.
Anthony Trask, lawyer for the grandparents, didn’t immediately return a message left at his office in Presque Isle.
The attorney general’s office, which intervened in the case, was pleased that the overall law now has been upheld twice, retaining the rights of grandparents who meet criteria set in the supreme court to seek visitation.
“These two opinions, taken together, still give the grandparent the right to petition the court to see if it’s in the child’s best interest for a grandparent to stay in the child’s life,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Pollack.
The grandparents, Herschel and Jane Conlogue, could file another petition but they’d have to focus on different criteria, he said.
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