Question:
Do grandparents have a chance of bringing up their grandchildren if the mother – their daughter – dies and her ex-husband lives abroad ?
Answer:
Grandparents can file for custody at the family court but the father, as the child’s natural guardian, will have priority as the choice of custodian. He is the first choice custodian and his right will only be taken away if there are exceptional reasons. Grandparents at best have visitation rights.
In one case the Tel Aviv Family Court decided that a father, a Swedish citizen and resident, should have custody of his10 year old son, who had been living in Israel since he was a toddler, following his mother’s sudden death. This was so although the professional report commissioned by the court recommended that the child should remain with his maternal grandparents in Israel – and although the child wanted this, too.
An Israeli citizen, the child’s deceased mother, had married in a civil ceremony in Sweden. After the couple divorced there, too, a Swedish court awarded them joint custody of the child. The mother brought the child to Israel to visit her family but never returned. The father eventually agreed to the child remaining in Israel but kept in regular phone contact with the child who visited Sweden every Summer. After the mother’s death when the child was 8, the boy moved in with his maternal grandparents, who lived adjacent to them, against his father’s wishes.
The court held that no exceptionally weighty reasons were found that justified preventing the father from gaining custody. He was said to be a positive person who had made suitable domestic and schooling arrangements for his son’s move to Sweden. It ordered psychological counselling to help prepare the child ,who loved his father and was well-balanced, for his new life. His worries about changing his lifestyle were normal, could be overcome and took second place to his father’s natural right to bring up his son, the court held.
Normally when the custody battle is between two biological parents the key factor is what is in the child’s good/best interest., and the views of a child can be accorded considerable weight. Where one parent dies ,however, and the custody battle is between the surviving parent and other relatives, the minor's wishes bear less weight. They become secondary to the surviving parent's natural right to bring up his child after the custodial parent's death, the court pointed out,.