Petition of Pamela & Robert Lundquist
Annotate this CasePetitioners Pamela and Robert Lundquist appealed a circuit court order that approved a Judicial Referee's recommendation that their petition for visitation with their grandchildren be dismissed for lack of standing. Petitioners are the parents of respondent, and the natural grandparents of respondent’s three minor children. Respondent’s husband, and natural father of the minor children, died in August 2010. In June 2014, petitioners filed a petition for grandparent visitation in the trial court. Respondent filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that the statute “contemplates grandparent visitation rights when a child’s nuclear family is absent due to ‘divorce, death, relinquishment or termination of parental rights, or other cause,’” but that “[t]he nuclear family here is intact” because “[t]he Mother is entirely capable of raising her three boys and has done so.” Respondent asserted that “[t]he Paternal grandparents may have standing since the death of their son in 2010 but maternal grandparents have no standing to bring forth this petition.” Petitioners objected, arguing, among other things, that they “have stated a claim for relief based upon the death of Respondent’s husband as well as ‘other cause.’” On appeal, petitioners argued that the trial court erred in granting the motion to dismiss because “the Grandparents are the natural grandparents of the minor children and the nuclear family was not intact." The Supreme Court held that the trial court erred as a matter of law in finding, contrary to the plain and ordinary meaning of the statutory language, that petitioners lacked standing to petition for grandparent visitation rights.
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