The Georgia Court of Appeals has reversed and remanded a trial court's decision in an interesting family law case. A grandmother petitioned the court to allow her to visit with her son's biological children. Her son and his wife had divorced a few years earlier; when the wife remarried, her new husband adopted the children.

The court allowed the adoption because the children's biological father had not communicated with them for more than a year and had not paid child support for quite some time. The father had terminated his parental rights, the court said, and the step-parent adoption was in the children's best interest.

The father initially objected to the adoption. One of his claims was that he had not surrendered his parental rights; he had never agreed to that. The court disagreed. The court referred to Georgia's statute that says that a parent's consent isn't required when the parent has failed to communicate or when the parent has failed to provide for the children's care and support as required by law or by judicial decree.

When the court approved the stepfather's adoption, it also terminated the grandmother's visitation rights. Under Georgia law, an adoption effectively severs "all former relationships" of the adopted child.

There is an exception, though. A grandparent may ask for visitation when a blood relative or stepparent adopts the child. According to the appellate court, the trial court didn't follow this statute when it denied the grandmother's petition. Rather, the court followed the old law that only allowed visitation when a blood relative adopted the child.

The matter didn't end there. The court had to look at another statute, and we'll discuss that in our next post.

Source: Leagle.com, Hudgins v. Harding, Court of Appeals of Georgia, Jan. 18, 2012