Grandmother had standing to seek visitation, COA affirms in adoption case

IL file photo

A grandmother who filed her grandparent visitation petition before her grandchild was adopted had standing to bring the action under the state’s Grandparent Visitation Act, the Court of Appeals of Indiana affirmed Tuesday.

According to court records, E.K. is the child of Joseph Kornman and Katy Scott and the grandchild of Vera Bowling. Scott and the child lived with Bowling until October 2017.

In September 2017, Joseph and Sirenia Kornman got married.

Then in November, Joseph Kornman established his paternity of the child and was awarded custody of her.

The Hamilton Superior Court also granted Scott supervised parenting time, while Bowing was appointed as the supervisor of the visits.

But in April 2019, Scott died.

Kornman allowed Bowling to continue to visit with the child weekly, although he did not allow overnight visits.

Bowling regularly visited with the child each week until approximately February 2020, when Kornman terminated her visits.

Also that month, Sirenia Kornman filed a petition in the Hamilton Superior Court to adopt E.K. She did not service notice of the adoption action on Bowling.

Meanwhile in Madison Circuit Court, Bowling filed for grandparent visitation.

The Hamilton Superior Court ultimately granted the adoption petition, but notice again was not served on Bowling.

Sirenia then filed a motion to intervene in Bowling’s Madison County action seeking grandparent visitation. That was when the grandmother first learned of the adoption action.

The grandmother’s petition was set for a hearing on March 23, 2021.

However, on that date, Madison Circuit Court 6 transferred the grandparent visitation action to Hamilton Superior Court 2 because “Hamilton County is the child’s county of residence.”

In July 2021, the trial court ruled that Bowling had standing to bring her claim under the Grandparent Visitation Act, granted Bowling’s petition for visitation with the child, and ordered the parents to pay Bowling $20,000 in attorney fees incurred in addressing the parents’ “spurious and wasteful litigation tactics.”

The Kornmans appealed, but the Court of Appeals affirmed, finding that because Bowling filed her grandparent visitation action before the date of the adoption decree, the trial court did not err when it ruled that she had standing to bring the action under the GVA.

Judge L. Mark Bailey wrote the opinion for the appellate court.

According to Bailey, under Indiana Code § 31-17-5-3(b), a petition for grandparent visitation “must be filed prior to the date a decree of adoption is entered.”

The appellate court disagreed with the Kornmans’ contention that Bowling lost her standing under the GVA by filing her petition for visitation after Serenia filed her adoption action but before the adoption decree was issued.

“The plain language of the GVA provides that a grandparent must file a petition for visitation prior to the date a decree of adoption is entered, and that is what Grandmother did,” Bailey wrote.

The Kornmans also asserted that a grandparent visitation action is not “commenced” when it is filed in the wrong venue. Thus, according to the Kornmans’ theory, Bowling never “commenced” her grandparent visitation action until her petition was transferred to Hamilton County in March 2021, which was after the date the adoption decree was entered.

But according to Bailey, the trial rules specifically provide that, when an action is filed in an improper venue, “the court in which such action is filed shall not then dismiss the action but shall order the action transferred to the court in which it should have been filed.”

“Thus, Grandmother’s grandparent visitation action was deemed commenced when she filed it in Madison County on May 1, 2020, almost a month before the adoption decree was entered,” he wrote.

Judges Elaine Brown and Peter Foley concurred.

The case is Joseph S. Kornman and Sirenia Kornman v. Verna Bowling, 23A-MI-1740.