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Grandparents’ visitation & child custody rights in Wilmington, North Carolina

Russell Family Law & Litigation • Jan 11, 2019
Child Custody Grand Parents

If you are a grandparent and you live in North Carolina, you have to keep in mind that there are limited rights when it comes to getting custody or visitation rights for your grandkids. As you can imagine, the Child Custody Wilmington, NC situation can be a bit tricky, depending on the situation.

Most of the time grandparents can choose to visit their grandkids when the parents are divorcing and there’s an open lawsuit for that. But depending on the situation, the grandparent also has the opportunity to seek custody of his/her grandkids. Usually, this happens when the grandkids are neglected, left in a dangerous environment by their parents or just abandoned to begin with. The possibility to acquire Child Custody Wilmington, NC is there, but there are a few layers to that.
Can grandparents visit their grandkids?

Most of the time they do that, however it all comes down to various visitation-related issues that might appear. It’s important to make a visitation claim as fast as possible, otherwise you might lose the right to visit them, and you want to avoid that as fast as possible. North Carolina also allows grandparents to push for child custody and there are 4 statutes that support such a thing.
Basically, if your child and his former spouse have a lawsuit in court, you can try to get visitation rights. This will help you figure out when you can actively visit your grandkids and the court might even offer a certain visitation schedule based on the situation at hand.

Visitation and custody rights
As you can imagine, the Child Custody Wilmington, NC rights are different when compared to the visitation rights. According to the basic laws, grandparents are allowed to seek visitation rights only when the custody case is currently going on. After the two parents reach an agreement, grandparents will not be able to ask for any visitation rights. Instead they will have to succumb to the agreement between the two parties.
It’s a very good idea to contact us right away to ensure that you make an informed decision when it comes to visiting your grandkids, finding the right visitation schedule and also maintaining a close relationship with them.
As you can imagine, it’s a lot harder for a grandparent to seek custody rights when it comes to visitation rights. Most of the time the court will need proof that both parents are unable to take good care of their kids if there are any abuse situations going on and so on. If there’s no open case at that time, the best option is to seek custody.

Conclusion
It all comes down to showing that the child is abandoned, no one is taking good care of him, and you are the only one that you can offer the help, assistance, and support that child needs. In the end, if the DSS is not taking the grandchild away from their parents, the grandparents will not get custody rights. It’s important to acquire visitation rights first, and if the child is abandoned by his parents, you can go ahead and appeal for the child custody rights!

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