Grandparent Caregivers Need Aid in Courtrooms

When her grandson was born, Wilma Ullum was overjoyed. The Davisville grandmother loaded up on toys, clothes and plenty of diapers. She baby-sat, sometimes for days at a time, while her daughter looked for a job and got settled in Morgantown. But later, when she decided to surprise her family for her grandson's second birthday, it was Ms. Ullum who got the shock.

"My grandson was so skinny you could count his ribs," remembers Ullum, "he wouldn't smile, wouldn't talk. He'd just blink his eyes at me." It didn't take long to figure out that her daughter's erratic employment and late-night partying didn't leave much room for the constant demands of a toddler. Ullum pleaded to take the baby, and when her daughter reluctantly agreed, she thought the battle was over. Unfortunately, the 53-year-old disabled grandmother still had one more barrier to overcome: $2,600 in legal fees.

In West Virginia and across the country, grandparents and other relatives are often the best answer for at-risk children whose parents struggle with substance abuse, domestic violence, mental illness, incarceration and other serious problems. More than 16,151 West Virginia grandparents report they are primarily responsible for their grandchildren. In almost half of these households, there are no parents present to help with daily child-rearing responsibilities or to provide badly needed economic support.

Despite their growing numbers -- 10 percent in the last ten years alone -- very few West Virginia grandparents and other relative caregivers have the recognized legal authority to make basic decisions for the children they are raising, including enrolling children in school, signing a permission slip, or authorizing a doctor's visit.

So why don't grandparents just go to court to get the legal guardianship they need?

First, there are not enough free legal services to serve the one-fifth of West Virginia grandparent caregivers who are living under the poverty line, especially in rural areas where there is often one attorney serving several counties. Even if the family is not desperately poor, retired or disabled grandparents living on a fixed income often earn too much to qualify for legal aid, but too little to afford the high cost of a private attorney.

In addition to this financial Catch-22, family law cases can be legally and emotionally complex. "In many cases, grandparents don't have any idea what to expect from the court system," says Lola Bailey, president of the National Committee of Grandparents for Children's Rights in Friendly, WV. "And they're understandably petrified of it." In order to obtain legal guardianship of their grandchildren, for example, grandparents must often prove their own children unfit, a difficult and complex standard to meet.

There is good news for those grandparents and other relatives who choose to represent themselves. The National Committee has partnered with the West Virginia Supreme Court, under the leadership of Justice Warren McGraw, to provide families with self-help brochures and videos to help caregivers navigate the legal process. The Relatives as Parents Program, a joint effort of Mission West Virginia, West Virginia University Extension Services and the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, also offers a comprehensive guide to help grandparents consider their legal options.

But in complex, contested guardianship cases, grandparents need an experienced lawyer.

Even in these tight budget times, a state-funded grant to provide legal services for West Virginia kinship care families is a cost-effective way to address this chronic lack of representation. With low-cost or free assistance based on each family's income, grandparents and other relatives acting as parents would be able to establish permanent legal arrangements that would keep children out of more costly foster care -- an overloaded system that is already responsible for more than 3,200 West Virginia children.

An initial, modest state investment could also be used to leverage successful public-private partnerships with, for example, existing (but woefully underfunded) legal aid programs, the West Virginia State Bar, or the clinical program at WVU Law School. Most important, an affordable, easily accessible network of legal services would allow relative caregivers to continue to raise children in stable homes, safe from parental instability and abuse and neglect.

In the end, Ms. Ullum was lucky. She put up her car as collateral to pay for a good lawyer who helped her get legal guardianship of her grandson, now a thriving 7-year-old honor student. For those West Virginia grandparents and other relatives who can't afford to do the same, however, it is the state's most vulnerable children who will pay the price.