When the United States Supreme Court decided Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (June 2000), litigants and the judges in grandparent visitation matters held their collective breaths. Would New York’s grandparent visitation statute be held unconstitutional?
Among the number of cases that followed, disposing of grandparent visitation matters under our statute, with due deference to the considerations enunciated in Troxel, was one lower court decision from Kings County, Hertz v. Hertz, 186 Misc. 2d 222 (Oct. 26, 2000) in which Justice Ira B. Harkavy dismissed a petition for grandparent visitation on the ground that DRL �72 violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution in accordance with the holding in Troxel. It has taken over a year to be disposed of by the Appellate Division, Second Department, but on Feb. 25, 2002, the order was reversed, the statute held not to be facially invalid and the matter remitted to the Supreme Court for proceedings in accordance with the Appellate Division Decision (The New York Law Journal, March 1, 2002, p.17, col. 2).
