Code of va section 16.1 278.15 code#

In so ruling, the appellate court concluded that the right of parents in raising their child is a fundamental right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court of Appeals held there is no constitutional problem in the applicable statutes.

Code of va section 16.1 278.15 code#

The *418 statute permits grandparents, and others, to seek visitation.ДЄs pertinent here, the statute provides: 'The court shall give due regard to the primacy of the parent-child relationship but may upon a showing by clear and convincing evidence that the best interest of the child would be served thereby award custody or visitation to any other person with a legitimate interest.' Code В§ 20-124.1 provides that the term 'person with a legitimate interest' is to be 'broadly construed and includes, but is not limited to grandparents, stepparents, former stepparents, blood relatives and family members.' On appeal to the Court of Appeals, the parents asserted that Code В§ 20-124.2(B), as it pertains to nonparent visitation, interferes with their right to autonomy in child rearing and, hence, violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The circuit court decided that the child would 'benefit from contact with her grandparents' that such visitation would not interfere with the child's health or emotional development that such visitation 'is a minimal intrusion into the family unit' that the grandparents 'obviously love' the child and 'have the ability to adequately care for her' and that the child's best interests would be served by having visitation with her grandparents.

The Montgomery County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court and, on appeal, the Circuit Court of Montgomery County ordered visitation. The parents and grandparents maintained regular contact until February 1994 when the parents announced to the grandparents, after consulting with a North Carolina 'counselor,' that they were 'detaching' or withdrawing from the relationship which previously existed with the grandparents.Д®ventually, the grandparents filed a petition seeking visitation with their granddaughter. They are mentally, physically, and morally fit, and are capable of meeting their daughter's financial, educational, moral, and social needs. The parents are respected members of the community in which they live. There is no evidence of parental abuse or neglect.

Williams are the child's paternal grandparents, who reside near the parents in Blacksburg. Williams, IV, and Sarah Hasty Williams, husband and wife who reside together, are the natural parents of a daughter born on March 9, 1991. This is a dispute between the parents of a child in an intact family unit and the child's paternal grandparents over the grandparents' right of visitation with the child.ДЄppellees Thomas O. Dorsey (Dorsey & Hartley, on brief), Blacksburg, for appellees.

Gregory Campbell, Jr., Blacksburg, for appellants.

Code of va section 16.1-278.15