Can parenting rights and time be awarded to grandparents either temporarily or permanently if both parents are deemed unfit?

That’s a high threshold to first find them unfit. Yes, there’s a new section in the statute that allows grandparents, stepparents, and siblings to come in and ask the court to have parenting time or, in that case, visitation because we want to distinguish it from parenting time. Those people are allowed to have visitation, and whether or not they get decision-making would depend on if the parents were both found unfit; if so, then the child would have to be adopted by someone.

With 30 years of experience in family law, Laura M. Urbik Kern is a certified mediator and family lawyer who concentrates on dissolution, family and juvenile law, child support, and complex domestic relations cases.