[EBerge3852]

When my son and his wife divorced she received full legal/physical custody of their daughter. My son was awarded supervised visitation in the divorce. His ex-wife subsequently committed suicide and her parents claimed that they had no way to contact my son and so they received guardianship of my son's daughter. They are now denying him visitation. Can the do this? Is their guardianship even legal in light of the fact that that falsely claimed they could not contact the father of the child?

[thewiseoldwoman]

Someone had to take legal guardianship of the daughter so its natural the wife's parents did that. If that was my son I'd tell him to hire an attorney and file for immediate custody.

[stinawords]

He really needs to get a lawyer and get back to court to have at least his visitation back. It does seem natural if the mothers parents were the closest living relatives that they would get guardianship. I'm not entirely sure that a judge would just up and give your son custody because there was a reason he only has supervised visitation. But he can at least get his vistation back and possibly upped if everything goes well then maybe custody. Of course stranger things have happened in cases like these and the faher, having not really know the child/ren got automatic full custody but because there are other living relatives in this case I don't see that happening at least not with him only having supervised visitation as it was.

[stevetcg]

He needs to get in to court and have his rights enforced. If he wants custody, it is likely that he can get that too since he has a stronger claim to the child than the grandparents, from a legal standpoint.