2003 House Bill 5039 ↩

House Roll Call 673: Passed

To establish conditions which permit a child's grandparent to seek a grandparenting time order from a court in a child custody dispute. Among others, these include cases where the grandparent has provided a custodial environment for the grandchild at any time during the child’s life; the child's parent has withheld visiting opportunities to retaliate against the grandparent for reporting child abuse or neglect; or the child's parent lives separate and away from the other parent and grandchild for more than one year. A father would have to acknowledge paternity or his parents could not petition for visitation. The bill revises the law to comply with a recent ruling from the state Supreme Court. The court ruled that the previous law excessively limited the authority of parents. The bill would place the burden of proof on a grandparent to show that a parent's decision to not approve grandparenting time is not in the child's best interest. This bill amends the state child custody, and House Bill 4104 makes the same changes to the state adoption code.