Speaking of Women's Health
The Speaking of Women's Health Podcast is excited to bring you credible women's health information from host and Executive Director, Dr. Holly L. Thacker. Dr. Thacker will interview guest clinicians discussing relevant women's health topics and the latest news and tips.
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Speaking of Women's Health
Grandparents' Rights: Legal Options When You Need to Step In
When family dynamics break down, who protects the bond between grandparents and grandchildren? Attorney Eva Saulnier returns to the Speaking of Women's Health Podcast to tackle this often-overlooked but emotionally charged area of family law.
Most grandparents are shocked to discover they have limited legal standing regarding their grandchildren. As Saulnier explains to Host Dr. Holly Thacker, courts maintain a strong preference for parental rights, even when those parents aren't perfect.
Whether you're concerned about your own grandchildren or supporting someone facing these difficult circumstances, this episode provides essential insights into the complex intersection of family bonds and legal rights.
Welcome to the Speaking of Women's Health podcast. I'm your host, dr Holly Thacker, and I am back in the Sunflower House for a new edition of this podcast, and I am so thrilled to have back in the Sunflower House a good friend and a prior guest, attorney, ava Saulnier. She joined us in season one to talk about family law, including tips on working with an attorney during divorce and custody matters, and usually, of course, we always like to talk about uplifting things to be strong, be healthy and be in charge, but things like end-of-life care, domestic violence, which we've tackled in season three, as well as divorce, are things that are part of life and it's important to be knowledgeable. And so she is back to discuss something that I found fascinating.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:I read what she was writing on LinkedIn and, as a grandmother of five, I was very interested in the topic of grandparent custody rights and she wrote a three-piece article series titled custody rights, and she wrote a three-piece article series titled when Grandparents Step In Legal Options for Visitation and or Custody in the State of Ohio, and I know we have listeners from around the world, but we'll be focusing on Ohio law, but I'm sure there's a lot of spring points that will be great food for thought for all of our listeners. Ava is advancing her practice and she's now an attorney in the KJK's family law practice, and she represents individuals and families in all aspects of domestic relations, which does include divorce, disillusionment, property division, support matters and custody matters. And she's quite talented in that she holds law degrees from both the United States, being a Case Western Reserve graduate of the School of Law as well as a law degree from France. Both she and her husband, douglas, are duly trained and their families expanded. Congratulations, ava, and welcome back to our podcast, thank you.
Eva Saulnier:Thank you so much, holly. I'm glad to be back.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:And so tell us, like this topic, I thought it was just not even anything that grandparents had anything to do with. In fact, during my several years of practice in specialized women's health, I have listened to many women in my office very distressed about grandchildren. If their children are not their adult, children might have drug abuse problems or abandonment issues or other unsafe situations, and I really just thought that a grandparent really didn't have any type of rights at all. So apparently I'm wrong.
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, there are some rights. It is, and we'll delve into it a bit more, but it is not easy to obtain necessarily. But there are ways of doing that when the situation calls for it, really. And so I started thinking about this because I'm expecting and not that I, you know, I don't think we'll have any issue with the grandparents.
Eva Saulnier:They'll be able to see the grandbaby, obviously, but but that, you know, that kind of made me think a little bit about that, because it is there's not a whole lot of information out there about this topic, so yeah, and I do think that I know I can't speak for European practices, but it would be interesting for your perspective on that.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:But it does seem like in American culture and law that parental rights are really pretty strong and that the thought is that even a parent that's maybe not the best parent is still better for the child than, you know, being the ward of the state or the county.
Eva Saulnier:Do you have?
Holly L. Thacker, MD:some comments or perspectives on that, just historically or legally.
Eva Saulnier:I think the school of thought of the courts in general is that they try to intervene as little as possible in the private realms of a family or anything that's private. So they'll intervene and take custody from a parent and give it to someone else only if there's really a big situation that calls for it. So, you know, sometimes I get clients even in in between parents that will tell me oh, it's, it's horrible. My kids, you know, with him or her they eat McDonald's every day. And I'm like I understand that this is not the best and you, dr Thacker, I'm sure will be horrified, but unfortunately the court is not gonna, it's not gonna be enough to take custody unless there's real proof that the child is malnourished or things of that nature. But if I don't have evidence I can't really help them. So yeah, I usually say unfortunately the standard is not A+.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:No, that's not, it's C minus D. Yeah, I usually say, unfortunately, the standard is not A plus. No, that's not, it's C minus D D. I think that's a good way to look at it and I was like mortified the other day when I found out that my granddaughter Artemis had had a fast food hamburger. I'm like, you're taking her to this place and I realized, well, I got to zip my lips because I'm not the parent heard of this place and I realized, well, I got to zip my lips because I'm not the parent, I'm the grandparent, even though sometimes they get on me for what my husband and I offer, although it can be really good. Like she accompanied us to the oyster bar the other day.
Eva Saulnier:And she has the best taste she does.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:She gets surf and turf eggs, hollandaise which is filet and lobster. But that is the point. I'm sure that divorcing parents have all sorts of complaints about screen time or staying up late at night, or whether they're using sunscreen or not. Speaking of that, Artemis says Mimi, why does my dad make me look like a ghost? He puts all this on my face, and so it's really. The parents are the primary ones, and I guess when the parents are divorced or separated, that's the parent who's got the child at that time. They're in charge, right? Or does the court come down saying well, this has to be agreed upon in terms of the parenting aspects?
Eva Saulnier:I mean they will. You know, for example, the court will take into consideration all of that. It's just, it's going to be a balance act. I would say so if you have a parent that will let the children just play video games all the time instead of actually doing homework, perhaps the person is not going to lose custody. But perhaps during the school year the court is going to be like, ok, maybe during the school year the children are going to be with the other parents so they can focus on schoolwork a bit more, have some time to really focus on school work a bit more, have some time to really focus on their, on their work, and then during the summer they'll they'll be with the other parent a bit more, because clearly the rules are not the same. So that might be the solution to to that, for example. But custody, which is decision making power, decision-making power that's really hard to be taken away. So, yeah, there's a difference between visitation and custody and that people usually kind of get those confused.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Visitation and custody. Right, right, those are very important topics. I think that when you've been a parent, you're just so used to being in that parenting role, Even once your child, of course, is completely emancipated and is an adult, even grown and have their own family. So I'm sure there's always a lot of natural tension and families between the grandparents who, well, I raised you just fine, you know look at you, and then the younger generation is looking at these older people. Well, you're just so out of touch and, like you know, I think it's kind of crazy, these millennials with their sleep obsessions, and they're reading these same apps about parenting and these sleep sacks, which I think is almost bordering on abuse, because I'm all for freedom of the arms and legs, but it's like that's what they want and apparently that's what they do and there's a lot of generational differences.
Eva Saulnier:Yes, those sleep sacks. I got so many of them, so many different ones, and I don't. I don't know which one, because you know everyone tells you that's what you have to get. They look so complicated so I'm like I hope just that the nurse will teach me how to use that, because this looks and I have a higher degree. But wow, it's just really hard to figure out.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Yeah, so we'll see figure out. Yeah, it's like a straight jacket. But I'm sure a lot of just you know your own instincts and you spending time with your child and understanding kind of what their needs were. When my first son was born, they said, oh, has to sleep on the stomach because that's better for them, that less sudden infant death. And I'm like Stetson only wanted to sleep on his back. And then by the time Emerson was born a year and a half later, oh no, they had the evidence you had to sleep on your back.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Well, he would cry and he was fussy and I'm like I'm just going to listen to what I think is my instinct as a mother, what's best for my child. And so I do think that that's so important for society and the law and the extended family to really respect the parents. It's their ultimate responsibility. But there are obviously times when grandparents or aunts or uncles or other relatives might feel the need to intervene for that child's safety or even just to seek visitation with their grandchildren. So when married parents decide to terminate their marriage or legally separate, how do the grandparents fare in that situation?
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, so in the run-of-the-mill divorce, typically we're not going to have grandparents seek visitation, necessarily because the parents are going to make sure that their parents see the grandchildren on their time. But sometimes there's an added layer. So one of the parents, there's some substance abuse, there's some incarceration, or they're estranged with their kids and it was really the other spouse that was arranging visits and then they're divorcing, and so you're like oh, I'm not going to see my grandkids, and what do we do? Because unfortunately, I'm not speaking with my children anymore, but I like to see the grandkids. So in those cases, uh, that's when, um, we have people that come in and kind of ask us what they can do, um, and so you can seek visitation, um, and so there's going to be a whole investigation, a whole process.
Eva Saulnier:It's pretty long, but at the end, if it's determined that it's in the best interest of the children, then you can get some court-ordered time where you know for sure you're going to be able to see your grandkids and you know they have a very vital role. I think grandparents have a vital role in their grandchildren's lives, so it's very, very much important. I didn't have the joy to have grandparents, so I'm very excited to have a child and have you know, see kind of the bond that you can have between grandparents and grandkids. I think that's just wonderful.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Yeah, I think it's just absolutely fabulous and I think both sides of your family are going to away when the children or grandchildren are obviously still minors. I mean, that would be just terrible if you're on the side of the family that you know the child, the adult child, passed away and then you feel like you don't have any access to ever seeing the grandchildren.
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, so that's the second situation where Ohio has recognized a path for a grandparent to seek visitation. So if in those circumstances, if you know your son, your daughter has unfortunately passed away, the other parent is not letting you see the grandkids, you can seek visitation through the courts. And so in the third. So there's three situations where you can seek visitation so during a divorce of the parents, death of one parent, or in juvenile court. So whenever a child is born of an unmarried woman those statutes are very old-fashioned in juvenile court, but that's how it's called and so in those situations you can seek visitation.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Now I understand from reading some of your articles and since I'm just as a boy mom, so my biological children are all males, so they wouldn't be the ones giving birth. It's of course you know the women, the woman that they're with, there's not. There's not a good edge, though, for the paternal side, correct, where there is an automatic edge of the maternal grandparent.
Eva Saulnier:So the maternal grandparents are going to be able to file very fast because of course we know that the paternal grandparents are associated with the mom, who's the mom For paternal grandparents. You're going to have to establish the paternity first, which isn't super hard, you know you just get a test, a paternity test.
Eva Saulnier:but you need to go through that process of having the court issue an order for paternity test, get the paternity test, pay for it and then, if you can prove all that, then you can seek a visitation. So it's just going to add a couple more months of the process which is already long enough and frustrating enough. So yeah, that's the, that's the only downside.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:And what if the father claims that that's his child, even though he's not married? Does that speed it up at all?
Eva Saulnier:So if you're not if you're on the birth certificate. If your name is on the birth certificate, that kind of gives you a little, a little edge. You'll have to do a test eventually, unless, I mean, if it's contested. If it's not contested, then you're not going to have to do that. So being on the birth certificate is a very good idea if you're not married.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:But what if you're in the situation I have a friend whose daughter is expecting a baby and is not married, but the father of the child has been verbally abusive and she doesn't think she wants a relationship with them. So in those cases, is it better that the woman not put the father's name on the birth certificate or does it not matter if he demands a paternity test and wants to be involved in the child's life?
Eva Saulnier:He'll. It's just going to make his life a little bit harder at first. If he's not on the birth certificate, it's not her responsibility to do it, it's his. So so you know, if she doesn't want to do those extra steps, she shouldn't. I mean, you know, um he's, if he wants to seek custody, he'll have to go through those steps. Um get his name added um you know, prove that he's the father, and then he can try and seek custody or visitation rights. Establish his rights. He'll have to file because they're not married.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Wow, so much. Well, you've been listening to the Speaking of Women's Health podcast and I'm your host, dr Holly Thacker, talking to an attorney in family law, dr Ava Saulnier, who's expanding her family, and we're talking about grandparents' rights in terms of in the law in the state of Ohio and the cases that I've heard about. As a physician dealing with my distressed midlife patients is what about the cases of abused or neglected dependent children? What are the grandparents' legal options in these situations when they really fear for the safety of their grandchild but they don't have custody?
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, so when a situation falls into that category we kind of fall into a little niche of the law where the agency is probably going to be involved. So social workers are going to be involved. In Cuyahoga County it's the Division of Children and Family Services, home, dcfs, and so they have their own little bubble. There's not really a set path written in black and white for a grandparent, so it's more likely going to be on a case-by-case basis where you know the people in charge, the social workers, the magistrate they're going to. Just the priority is to put the children in a safe place. So it might be the grandparents' home, it might be a foster home, it depends on the case. But they'll definitely reach out to all of the relatives to see there's sort of a priority of the blood first Is it.
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, there's a priority of closer to the family and then you can expand. Foster homes are going to be the last, really the last, solution. They try to not place kids. If they can have a family member that can do it and he's competent to take care of the kids.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Oh, that's good to hear, because I've just heard at least you know stories, people telling me oh no, went to the foster home, but we were the great aunt or the great uncle and have resources and we're wanting to take care of these children, like in the case of you know, both parents being incarcerated or or deceased.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:you know one thing, which I'm sure we could probably do a whole other podcast on um in terms of the whole assisted reproductive technology and how there's surrogacies and you know donated eggs and you know there's the child that was conceived with a third person's mitochondria you know the mother and the father and then another mitochondria in a surrogate. And can you comment a little bit about those rules, like if you had a surrogate grandchild that was biologically related to you but wasn't being raised by um, your biological adult child, do you have any rights to that?
Eva Saulnier:child. That really adds a lot of layers and I don't think that the court or the law has caught up on the scientific achievements that we can. You know what we can do nowadays, so there's not a whole lot of case law on this. But mainly what is going to control is the surrogacy agreement or you know, whatever agreement is being signed or contract is being signed at the facility. So you really have to pay attention to the terms that are in there, because it's going to define who has custody, who has rights, who has parental rights, who doesn't. So usually the courts are going to look at those contracts very closely because that's the easiest way of doing this. Otherwise it's just kind of mayhem.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Right, and doesn't it possibly depend on what county in the state of Ohio that you're in?
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, there's just not controlling law yet, so I don't believe that there's a whole lot of. So I don't believe that there's a whole lot of Ohio Supreme Court laws yet or precedent on all of those cases. So it will depend until it goes up, until there's an appeal and you get a Supreme Court case. Then it kind of depends on all counties.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Even within the same same court you can have different rulings depending on your hearing officer, um so well, I would assume that most egg donors and most sperm donors, as well as the surrogate gestational carriers, probably sign away all their rights, generally speaking. So if they've signed away all their rights, I wouldn't think, secondarily, that grandparents would probably not have a leg to stand on.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:And I think a lot of people find out these things later, when they've done, you know, their recreational genetic testing, and then they find out they have blood relatives they never knew about. That's a whole other discussion.
Eva Saulnier:But one thing I would.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:I would say that I just learned recently from my PhD geneticist, son Stetson is he was telling me that the paternal grandparents have the genetic edge because there's less assortative changes in the male gamete than the female. And then if you're a paternal grandmother like I I am of granddaughters then you have the most edge out of all four of the grandparents because your son gave that X chromosome to the daughter.
Eva Saulnier:So there's that. I don't know that that has any effects in the law.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:But if they're going straight on blood there's a little bit more genetic similarity.
Eva Saulnier:Maybe I'll try that argument one day. Yes, we'll see if that works, if that works. Yeah.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Yeah, oh my. So let's talk about custody. When would a grandparent need to step in and try to seek custody of their grandchildren?
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, so custody is going to be decision-making powers, so all of those decisions that are big decisions for the kids, which is school decisions, medical decisions, extracurriculars, all of that good stuff. So that's kind of an added layer than just visitation rights where it's just time with the kids. Than just visitation rights where it's just, you know, time with the kids. Um, so you're gonna want that if really there's a big issue with the parents, they are not able to support, um, the, your grandkids, their kids, um, and so you are doing this out of love, not necessarily obligation, but you know that you need to step in for the kids.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:So could that be in like a situation like of homeless? I know that years ago, when I served on the school board, we actually, of course, in the state of Ohio, there's law and we had policy for how you deal with students that are homeless for how you deal with students that are homeless.
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, yeah, that would be. You know, inability to support financially is also would be something that could qualify, so yeah. So if you're seeking custody through the court, the first step is that you're going to have to prove unsuitability or that the parents are unfit to care for the kids. So that's gonna be the first step. You may have a full trial on that first and then if the court finds that the parents or the parent there can probably have only one sometimes is unfit, then you go and do kind of the more traditional trial, which is going to be about the best interests of the children.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Are there times when the remaining parent doesn't want the children or it's amicable and they want to give up the custody. Does that make it easier?
Eva Saulnier:Very much, very much. So it it's. It's pretty rare, but it does happen. Yeah, um, it does happen. And so if a parent wants to give up his or her parental rights, the court it will accept. You know, the court is not going to go against someone's wishes, um, so you can just in that that case it's fairly easy. You just kind of draw up an agreement and then get that signed by the court.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:So how does a grandparent go about seeking legal custody of the grandchildren?
Eva Saulnier:So you file a motion in the court for custody, Then there's going to be kind of all of the usual in my world people that are going to come into play. So you might have a guardian ad litem, which is typically an attorney that is trained and will do an investigation we might get and that guardian ad litem is like the child's own attorney.
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, sort of I think. Yeah, it's the person that has. It's the person that will write a report to the court and state what they think is in the child's best interest. So they'll talk with the school teachers, with the family relatives. They'll go to each parent's house and see what the house looks like, how they interact with each parent, with the grandparents too. Then in that case you're going to have a visit of the grandparents. I'm sure in most cases, you know the grandparents' health is going to be in play too, because we need to make sure, if they're older, we need to make sure that they are able to take care of the kids in terms of their health as well. So there's just a whole lot of factors that come into play. So that's why it takes so long, because there needs to be a lot of data for the courts to be able to make a ruling.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Is there typically social workers and child psychologists or folks like that involved?
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, yeah, we try to have different so there can be a child psychologist that will testify in court, but that won't be necessarily the the treating psychologist for the children, because we try to kind of let them have their own space and so that the kids know that they can say things that won't end up in a report somewhere they need to have their safe bubble that won't be breached. So then we kind of duplicate the amount of people that are involved, but it's kind of to try to protect them.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:So talk to us about the difference between temporary custody through a power of attorney and temporary custody through a caretaker authorization affidavit.
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, so those can be done by agreement from the parents. The power of attorney. Custodial parents or both custodial parents can sign that to the grandparents if they think. Usually it's in a situation where the kids are already living with the grandparents. The parents are not necessarily doing well, they have their own issues. Parents take care of the kids and the grandparents need to have some sort of document that give them the power to make decisions, because they need to enroll the kids in school, they need to take them to the hospitals and make decisions. You know all of that. So you can sign a power of attorney after david's uh kind of granting that authority to make decisions on a temporary basis.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Is that a good thing to do, Like there's been times that I've watched my grandchildren, you know, once when my son and his wife were out of the country vacationing and other shorter periods of time. But you know, I just remember when my sister was a little girl and broke her arm and the neighborhood parent took her into the emergency room even though she was in distress and her arm was visibly needing to be set because it was completely deformed, the hospital wouldn't do anything because there wasn't anybody who had legal authority to even authorize. I mean, it wasn't life-threatening, but it was still an emergency, but not life-threatening.
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, that could be a good, that could be a good idea to do that. So you have to kind of get it signed every single time. So it can be a little hassle to get that done and then kind of.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:And my one son said oh, we don't really need this, because if something happens and you take them to the emergency room, you can just get us on the phone.
Eva Saulnier:Well, sometimes you can't always get people on the phone, you know we do live in a world where it is much easier to get a hold of someone, but sometimes you can't. I would imagine that if it's a life-threatening situation, the hospital would act at some point. Right yeah, if it's life-threatening.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:The problem is when it's not exactly life-threatening, but it might be still painful and uncomfortable. So that's why I usually like at least something written down and all the insurance information and all of that and obviously parents aren't granting you complete authority indefinitely, but for whatever that period of time is, For a small period of time, Time right. And what about legal custody through the parents' agreement?
Eva Saulnier:I'll just talk about the caretaker one, because that's to say, um, just the caretaker authorization affidavit is when you can't get a hold of the parents. You are the grandparent, your grandchild is living with you. You don't know where the parents are. It happens, yeah, like they've just gone away, they're just gone, and so in. So in that situation you need a paper that gives you rights. So you'll fill that out and then file it with the court, and so then you get a court order that you can take decisions. It's only, you know, if one of the parents shows up again and contests that, then it kind of reverses right away. So that's why we say it's temporary, because it's as soon as it's contested, then the rights go back to the parents.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Like if the parent was kidnapped and then all of a sudden they were free. Yeah, I guess.
Eva Saulnier:Anything's possible. But yeah, so that's the caretaker authorization affidavit, and then you know, the parents can also just agree and enter into an agreement with the grandparents to grant them temporary custody. It's possible.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:I haven't seen that yet, but it's possible I haven't seen that yet, but it's possible really, even like in this global world, like what if the parent had business and they had to be out of the country and they didn't want to take their child, for whatever reason, and they wanted their child in the same I don't know school district or environment?
Eva Saulnier:yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, in those cases, grandparents' rights in general is extremely, fairly rare. I would say it's not so. I haven't yet seen that situation, but I might. It's very much possible, yeah.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:So let's discuss the legal processes for grandparents who want to petition the court for legal custody. I read in your article that to overcome a parent's constitutional right to custody, a grandparent seems like they have a pretty high heel decline. They have to prove in court the parent is unsuitable. And what does that mean for a parent to be legally unfit to be a parent?
Eva Saulnier:And what does that mean for a parent to be legally unfit to be a parent? Yeah, I think we touched a little bit on that earlier, but that was my example of them eating McDonald's every day. That's not.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:That's not being unfit. You can take them for junk food.
Eva Saulnier:Yeah yeah, that's not necessarily being unfit. It's defined as the total inability to provide care or support. So that's quite a high bar. You're going to have to really gather a lot of evidence, but it happens. I've had a case just recently where mom and dads were both proven to be unfit.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:The cases that I have my patients come to me about very concerned is like the adult parent, their child or their in-law or whatever. The other one is like passed out on drugs or like not putting them in seatbelts or taking them to parties or having them exposed to like really unstable, unsavory situations based on what they're doing, and a lot of it stems from drug abuse and the drug culture that you know is very scary and shocking and dangerous, but maybe nothing's yet completely yet happened to that child. But I mean, those are the cases that I think about patients telling me about.
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, and those are all good examples of what could constitute an unsuitability. It's just going to be, you know, you're going to have to gather as much as possible and then you're kind of left in the hands of the hearing officer and what they think is sufficient or not.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:But so that's the first step and do they like give the parent several chances for, like, going into rehab? Does that mitigate or only make temporary custody as opposed to permanent custody? Mitigate or only make temporary custody as opposed to permanent custody? Is that what the court does if they're trying to let the parent, you know, get off and get clean and straighten up?
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, what I've seen often is in cases of dependency or things of that nature, of drugs and things like that, there's going to be usually a plan, a step-up plan. So we're going to have okay, dad or mom is going to have to go through a sober test every other day, blah, blah, blah. You know we have like all of those. And then if mom and dad have been sober for six months, then their visitation rights increase to that many days. And you know we go from supervised to maybe unsupervised, and so it's a step up plan every time that they can reach their sober goals. And it might take years until they get all of their rights back. So during that time maybe the grandparents will have temporary custody until the parents can kind of get clean. And so if the parents just keep failing and failing and failing, then at some point maybe the court will just say, okay, maybe grandparents should just have custody at this point.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:So throughout, your article series. I read the words in quote the best interest of the child. But what does that mean legally in terms of how the court makes that determination?
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, it's kind of like the magic phrase. It's. It's defined in the Ohio statute and there's about, I think, 16 factors that the court takes into consideration to determine what is in the best interest of a child. So it's going to be the child's relationship with the parents or the grandparents, how they're doing in their community, the health of everyone, mental health of everyone. You know the age of the children and what sometimes you know their wishes are going to be taken into consideration if they're mature enough to make that type of decision. So there's no age really of what is a mature child. It kind of depends. Some children are very mature in their 12. Some are not mature in their 16. So yeah, there's a whole lot of factors. It's in ORC 3109-051. It's a long statute, very, very long, and so there's a there's just a bunch of things that come into consideration to make that decision and yeah, it's a lot.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Yeah, tough situations. Any final thoughts or words of advice to our listeners who may be going through something similar to this or have other friends or family that are kind of grappling with these problems?
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, I would say, typically, if grandparents are going to step in and go through the courts for rights, they do it out of love, and so I just want to, you know, they should just remind themselves things are going to be a little frustrating, and to kind of not get caught up in this frustration and then make decisions out of frustration based on the other side, the other parents. But try to take a step back, look at the big picture. What is the real goal? It's your grandkids. You know well-being and make decisions based on that. To not forget the kids in the midst, because sometimes that's just what happens.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:Yeah, I can imagine lots of power plays and dramas and other things, and then you add that to just the delays in in the court and the very high bar that you mentioned, which I think is important, you know, for the, for the child and for the parent. Well, thank you so much, ava, for joining us on the Speaking of Women's Health podcast, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in, and if people want to contact you, they can look for you on LinkedIn and your professional profile.
Eva Saulnier:Yeah, and you know, if they type KJK, my profile should pop up and there's all of my articles that get also posted on our firm's page.
Holly L. Thacker, MD:So oh, that's great. I found them so interesting. So, thank you all so much. We're grateful for our listeners and we hope that you continue to support our podcast. Share it with others. Give us a five-star rating, you can donate to our nonprofit, speakingofwomenshealthcom, leave us a comment and if you've got any questions on any topics that you want us to cover, email us at contactus at speakingofwomenshealthcom. Remember, be strong, be healthy and be in charge.
