As promised to Paris Logue readers in Scotland, here’s an update on grandparents’ rights in France (and in Europe). First of all there’s the Le Figaro January 2 article which I mentioned in a previous entry. It lists the highlights of the new law including rights of visitation, rights to assist with education, rights to exchange correspondence.
According to the site www.infobebes.com,
there are no hard and fast rules or guidelines about the length of a grandchild’s stay. Normally a judge takes the family situation into consideration i.e. whether the parents are divorced or not, the age of the child, the child’s schooling arrangements. The duration of the visit is also variable. It can be one Sunday per month or two to three weeks during vacation per year. It depends (to quote a famous Norman quote.) Normally the judge tries to let the family designate the dates and lodging arrangements.
In certain cases, the judge will decide against visits if he or she finds grandma and grandpa to be incapable of caring for the child, if the visit would present a dangerous situation for the child, if the relations between parents and grandparents is so bad as to perturb the child, or simply if the child has no desire to be with the grandparents.
Parents have the right to deny visits if the grandparents do not live in France.
For those of you living in Scotland, you might want to take a look at the site for the Yearbook of the European Convention of Human Rights which mentions Article 8 in relation to Family Rights.
If you’re looking for more information on Grandparent’s rights in France on the internet you need to key in “ Droits des Grand-parents”.
{ 2 comments }
Dear Chris, Thank you for this information. In Scotland grandparents Apart Self Help Group worked with the government to produce \’The Charter for Grandchildren\’ but it disappointed us when they refused to make it law, it is for guidelines only and we have no evidence that it is helping at all in families.
There is some evidence that Sheriffs (judges) are slightly more sympathetic to the role grandparents can play but it will never really be workable until the charter is made legal.
Hopefully the EU Article 8 may provide a good framework for grandparenting issues in Scotland. Another point I didn\’t mention, in France, family mediation is used before going to the courts - obviously in some cases this isn\’t enough. My own personal observations have been that patience is a strong virtue. When grandparents can sit back for a few years and give the issue time, sometimes a family comes together again - but of course for grandparents time is much shorter! Not to mention having lost those first precious years with a grandchild when the bonding can begin.
Comments on this entry are closed.