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Visitation ruling should have little effect in Oregon By CHRIS BRISTOL Thanks to safeguards built into Oregon�s grandparent-visitation law, the shockwaves from Monday�s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court should be minimal, legal experts say. But even though the decision does not directly endanger court orders in Oregon and other states � at least for now � the main opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O�Connor strongly defended the primacy of parental rights and intimated the court is ready and willing to revisit the issue. "It lacks clarity," complained Portland attorney John Chally, who specializes in family law. "Having said that, there�s no way you can reasonably read this opinion and not conclude that today the parent has the leg up and that their vision of how to raise a child is going to be ... pre-eminent in the courtroom." The 6-3 ruling effectively struck down a Washington law giving grandparents and others broad visitation rights. The main opinion � written by O�Connor, one of six grandparents on the nation�s highest court � articulated an important general principle: Absent evidence of parental inadequacy, such as abuse or neglect, parents have the "fundamental right" to decide what is in a child�s best interests. "So long as a parent adequately cares for his or her children ... there will normally be no reason for the state to inject itself into the private realm of the family," O�Connor wrote. But the high court�s decision stopped short of answering the many questions faced by courts across the country on a daily basis, and did not give parents absolute veto power over who gets to visit their children. Every state in the country has some sort of visitation law. Earlier this year, a young Medford father was briefly jailed when he and his wife refused a supervised court-ordered visitation involving their 2-year-old daughter and the child�s maternal grandfather. The Washington case involved an Anacortes couple, Gary and Jenifer Troxel, who went to court to seek more time with two of their granddaughters. The girls are the daughters of their son, Brad Troxel, who committed suicide in 1993. Their son never married the girls� mother, Tommie Granville, who subsequently tried to limit their visits to three hours a month. The Troxels eventually won visitation of one weekend a month and one week during the summer, plus four hours on the girls� birthdays. In doing so, they benefited from a state law that allowed "any person" to win a court-ordered right to see a child any time such visitation was found to be in the child�s best interest. "The Washington statute was just kinda crazy," said Mark Johnson, another Portland attorney who specializes in family law. "It said that any person at any time can march down to the courthouse and file (for visitation) just because they have a beef with somebody." Oregon�s grandparent-visitation law, first passed in 1979 and amended as recently as last year, is different in some important ways from the Washington law. Also included in the mix is a 1985 Oregon law that recognizes nonrelatives who can establish they acted as "psychological parents" to a child. Among those safeguards: Oregon law gives grandparents no standing in a case unless they�ve been denied visitation altogether; in addition, grandparents (not parents) have the burden of proving that being denied visitation is not in the children�s best interest. The Supreme Court ruling actually cited a provision in Oregon�s grandparent-visitation law � the one requiring total denial of visitation before a grandparent can sue � as better tailored than Washington�s law. But despite such protections, Oregon law still lacks clear language that the "vision" of parents is pre-eminent, Chally said. "The burden has shifted," he said. "You have to start giving parents greater deference in the process and listen more closely to what (parents) believe is in the best interests of the child." Although the Troxel case applied only to Washington, the Supreme Court�s ruling could filter down on a case-by-case basis as a precedent of sorts in Oregon and could affect the appeals process, Johnson and Challey said. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Salem who ideologically oppose rights to grandparents and "psychological" parents may see the ruling as a chance to change the law. "If there are people in the Legislature who are looking for an opportunity to repeal these statutes, this will be their perfect opening," Johnson said. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA