Seniors today play a greater role in the lives of their grandchildren than ever before.

Grandparent involvement in the lives of the grandchildren can have significant benefits for everyone involved. Grandparents are the link between a family’s past and its present and can be wonderful family historians, helping to carry on family traditions. While they can provide wisdom about their life experiences, they benefit from having a bond with their grandchildren as a way of staying young and keeping in touch with the younger generation.

Unfortunately, grandparents sometimes encounter situations in which they lose contact with a grandchild because of the death of their child or other family circumstances causing estrangement with the parents of the grandchild. In addition, there are some situations in which a grandparent wishes (sometimes reluctantly) to step into the role of caretaker of their grandchild due to drugs, alcohol, abuse or neglect issues with the parent or parents of the child.

So many grandparents may wonder, what rights do I have?

Whether grandparents can have the rights to spend time with a grandchild or even go as far as get custody of a grandchild who is in a bad situation will depend almost entirely on state law. Grandparent rights vary from state to state, although the trend in the law is that more and more states are expanding legal avenues for grandparents to have such rights.

And although state laws vary, it’s clear that when a grandchild is at risk for harm, there is an opportunity for grandparents to gain increased access as the grandchild’s primary caretakers. This is also true if the grandparents have already acted as the grandchild’s primary caretaker for a significant period of time, often at least six months, a legal concept is known as “in loco parentis.”

In the instance of the death of one of the parents, it is important to note that grandparents do not necessarily step into the shoes of their deceased child in terms of the amount of time they are given with the grandchild. For example, let’s say a grandparent’s son is divorced from the mother of his child and has time with his children every other weekend. If their son then passes away, the grandparents would not necessarily get the same schedule that their son had. The court may give them one weekend per month, or perhaps just time during certain alternate holidays and the summer. The court would ordinarily consider such factors as geographic proximity, the relationship the grandchild previously had with the grandparents, the grandparents’ interest in and ability to handle the responsibilities of educating the child, concerns about the grandparents raised by the other parent of the child, and other factors pertaining to the best interests of the child. Notably, however, courts are not performing a pure “best interests” test because deference is given to the rights of the parents of the grandchild.

The situation most limiting to grandparents is when the grandchild’s parents are together and the family is “intact” but the parents do not allow the grandparents access because they simply cannot get along with them. In fact, some states consider allowing grandparents rights in this situation to be unconstitutional, as interfering with the rights of the parents.

While it is universal that parents inherently have rights that supersede that of grandparents, there are legal actions that grandparents can take depending on the circumstances and the law of the state having jurisdiction over the grandchild.

Carla Schiff Donnelly is an attorney in the Pittsburgh-based family law firm of Gentile, Horoho & Avalli, P.C., where she focuses her practice on divorce and child custody cases.