Court allows grandparents visiting rights

PORTLAND – The state supreme court Monday upheld the constitutionality of the Maine Grandparents Visitation Act in a case in which a couple sought to stay in touch with three grandchildren, including one who referred to her grandparents as “mom and dad.”

Ruling on the constitutionality for the first time, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court determined in a split decision that grandparents should be allowed to ask a court to order visits under narrow guidelines.

The ruling set aside a judge’s dismissal of the Penobscot County couple’s request for rights to regular visits with three grandchildren, one of whom lived with them for the first seven years of her life.

The case involving the three children goes back to Bath District Court, where a judge must reconsider the case.

The court’s majority ruled that the state law’s focus is narrow enough to pass constitutional muster, unlike a similar law in Washington state that was found to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court last June.

Unlike the Washington state law, the Maine law keeps parents in the decision-making process and gives deference to their will.

“The fundamental right of parents to direct the care and upbringing of their children does not disappear in the face of a third party’s request for visitation with the children,” Justice Leigh Saufley wrote for the court.

The case before the court involved grandparents Chesley and Rose Rideout of Garland, who sought visitation rights over the objection of the children’s mother, who cut off contact when she got married.

The oldest of the three grandchildren had lived with the Rideouts for most of the first seven years of her life. The girl, now 13, refers to her grandparents as “mom and dad,” Rose Rideout said Monday night.

“Anybody who raised a child until 7 should see their child to make sure they’re developing and to make sure they’re being taken care of, and not being abused,” she said in a telephone interview.

Rideout said her daughter, Heaven Riendeau of Richmond, restored contact with her grandchildren nearly two years ago after a divorce. But the couple remains fearful that Riendeau will cut them off again should she remarry.

The 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.

Since the case addressed only the latter scenario, the other two grounds for grandparents to get involved remain subject to an appeal.

Nonetheless, Rideout’s attorney, Joseph Baldacci of Bangor, said the court’s ruling is important for grandparents across the state because it’s the first time the court ruled on the law’s constitutionality.

“The bottom line is that this will establish that grandparents in Maine have a right to ask for visitation,” he said.

Justice Donald Alexander was the lone dissenter. He wrote that the case deserved strict attention since the U.S. Supreme Court has limited states’ roles in the child care decisions of a fit parent.

“A parent’s right to direct the upbringing and control of their children is not a right to be lightly cast aside whenever the state or the courts think they have a better idea about how children should be raised,” Alexander said.