I’m not the best at reporting on events as they happen. Conferences, meetings, and conversations often don’t “sink in” until later—they come back to me in my thoughts, in my work, or in the courtroom waiting room.
In December, I attended the Shared Parenting Conference Lisbon 2025, dedicated to family relationships after separation. One of the presentations—by Prof. Edward Kruk, who has been researching the impact of various forms of a child’s separation from loved ones since the summer—particularly stuck with me because it addressed alienation, but not between parents. It was about grandparents.
The research and discussions highlighted something that is very common in practice: after parents separate, it is the grandparents who lose contact with their grandchildren. Not because the relationship is harmful to the child, but because they become “part of the opposing side.”
Meanwhile—despite its many flaws—Polish family law recognizes grandparents’ right to contact with their grandchildren (and grandchildren’s right to contact with their grandparents, of course). Grandparents are not just a helping hand with childcare or a holiday addition to family life. Very often, they are a safe haven—a person outside the conflict, with whom the child does not have to choose sides or protect anyone.
During the same conference, Prof. Maria Filomena Gaspar emphasized how important it is, in cases of children’s loyalty conflicts, to ensure that the child has an adult in their circle of loved ones who is not involved in the parents’ dispute. Grandparents—even though they may seem to be on one side—can often create just such a space: calm, stable, and based on love for their grandchild, rather than on adult conflict.
We forget that children are not the property of their parents. They have the right to a relationship with their grandparents—regardless of the nature of the relationship between the adults. And every good, safe person in a child’s life enriches it; such a person can be of immense importance to the child’s mental health and development, especially during a family crisis.
If parents object to grandparents’ contact with the children, the family court can be involved in the dispute. If contact with the grandchildren was regular before the separation, the court will likely recognize the value of this relationship and protect it. Even if the grandparents have not seen their grandchild before—and in cases of severe alienation, this is often the case—it does not negate the grandparents’ right to establish contact with their grandchild, though it requires a careful, gradual plan for building the relationship that will strengthen the child rather than create additional tension.
There is much to criticize about our family law system, but in this one area, it recognizes something very important: a child is not the property of the parents. And grandparents are important—and they have their own rights.