Two prior articles have summarized Georgia’s Grandparent Visitation Rights Act of 2012 and its 2022 amendment (the “Act”).(1) As they discussed, the Act as amended expressly authorizes grandparents (as well as great-grandparents and siblings) to file original actions for visitation rights to min...
Where parents have previously litigated child custody in a divorce or other domestic relations action, they often return to court asserting claims of the noncustodial parent’s failure to pay child support or the custodial parent’s withholding of visitation. In such cases, a longstanding rule in Geor...
The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed an award of child custody to a maternal grandmother in its April 2022 decision in Hayle v. Ingram.(1) There, the Court held that the grandmother’s evidence of harm sufficiently supported the trial court’s award of permanent custody of a minor child to her from t...
The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed an award of child custody to a paternal grandmother in its February 2020 decision in Reder v. Dodds.(1) There, evidence at trial showed that the teenaged child had been adopted by the father from Nicaragua when she was six or seven years old. The child subsequen...
The Georgia Court of Appeals reversed an award of child custody to a maternal grandmother in its June 2016 decision in Floyd v. Gibson.(1) There, a biological father sought legitimation and custody of three minor children who had lived with their maternal grandmother since their mother suffered a dr...