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An Allen County grandmother seeking visitation with her granddaughter had standing under the state’s Grandparent Visitation Act to submit a visitation petition, the Court of Appeals of Indiana ruled in a Wednesday reversal.
According to court records, C.B. was born on April 21, 2014, to Courtney Bowser and Grant Bockelman. Bowser is C.B.’s custodial parent.
Terri Welbaum is Bowser’s mother. The mother and child lived with Welbaum during the first year of C.B.’s life, and the grandmother provided in-home care for C.B. from September 2014 to May 2019.
But starting in May 2019, Bowser began restricting the amount of time Welbaum spent with C.B. She eventually allowed the grandmother to visit with C.B. only with the mother’s supervision.
In December 2020, Bowser began completely denying Welbaum visitation with the child, and the grandmother has not seen C.B. since.
On Oct. 11, 2021, Welbaum filed a petition for grandparent visitation, arguing it was in the child’s best interests because the mother had a mental illness that made her an unfit parent, and because the grandmother and C.B. have a close relationship. Welbaum also filed a motion for temporary supervised grandparent visitation.
Bockelman filed a motion to intervene, which was granted by the Allen Superior Court.
In December 2022, the mother and father filed a joint motion to dismiss the grandmother’s request for visitation with prejudice. They argued Welbaum did not have standing to pursue visitation pursuant to the GVA. The mother and father also filed a joint motion to dismiss the grandmother’s request for temporary supervised grandparent visitation in which they made the same standing argument.
The trial court issued an order in which it determined Welbaum did not have standing to pursue grandparent visitation because she was the parent of Bowser, who was C.B.’s custodial parent, and thus dismissed the grandmother’s petition for grandparent visitation.
Also, the trial court denied Welbaum’s subsequent motion to correct error.
Welbaum appealed the trial court’s denial of her motion to correct error, arguing that she had standing to pursue grandparent visitation based on the plain language of the GVA.
The Court of Appeals agreed and reversed the trial court’s order.
Judge Melissa May wrote the opinion for the appellate court.
According to May, the appellate court recently examined the same issue in Stoner v. Stoner, 223 N.E.3d 278 (Ind. Ct. App. 2023). In that case, the court ruled that the current version of the GVA “does not preclude a grandparent from seeking visitation with a child where the custodian of the child is the grandparent’s child.”
Likewise here, May wrote that Indiana law does not preclude Welbaum from pursuing grandparent visitation with her granddaughter.
“Therefore, the trial court erred when it dismissed Grandmother’s petition for grandparent visitation with Child based on her alleged lack of standing,” May wrote.
The appellate court remanded the case for proceedings consistent.
Judges L. Mark Bailey and Paul Felix concurred.
The case is In Re: the Visitation of: C.B. Terri Welbaum v. Courtney Bowser, and Grant Bockelman, 23A-MI-1586.
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