§ 19-7-3.Actions by grandparents or other family members for visitation rights or intervention; revocation or amendment of visitation rights; appointment of guardian ad litem; mediation; hearing; notification to family members of child’s participation in events

This is Georgia’s grandparent visitation statute, but it reaches beyond grandparents. A “family member” means a grandparent, great-grandparent or sibling, and “sibling” here means a brother or sister of the child’s parent — the child’s aunt or uncle — not the child’s own brother or sister. Each definition also covers relatives through a parent who has died or whose parental rights were terminated.

There are two ways into court. Only a grandparent may file an original action for visitation. Any family member may intervene in a case about the child’s custody, the parents’ divorce, termination of a parent’s rights or visitation, or after the child is adopted by a blood relative or a stepparent, despite the general rule in § 19-8-19 that adoption cuts ties to former relatives. No original action is allowed when the parents are not separated and the child lives with both of them. A grandparent may not file an original action more than once in any two-year period, or in any year in which another custody action has been filed concerning the child.

The court may grant reasonable visitation only if it finds by clear and convincing evidence that the child’s health or welfare would be harmed without it and that visitation serves the child’s best interests. A missed chance to build a relationship is not harm when no substantial relationship already exists. The court must consider, and may find harm likely, when before the case the child lived with the family member for six months or more, the family member paid for the child’s basic needs for at least one year, there was a pattern of regular visits or child care, or other circumstances show emotional or physical harm is reasonably likely. The judge must make specific written findings. A parent’s decision gets deference but is not conclusive when denying contact would cause the child emotional harm, and the court may presume — subject to rebuttal — that a child cut off from a family member with a preexisting relationship may suffer emotional injury. Visitation can’t interfere with school or regularly scheduled extracurricular activities and must total at least 24 hours in any one-month period, shared in the aggregate when several relatives ask.

Subsection (d) adds a separate path when a parent has died, is incapacitated or is incarcerated: that parent’s own parent may receive visitation under the same clear-and-convincing harm and best-interest test, with similar factors measured before the death, incapacity or incarceration. Once a grandparent has visitation under subsection (c), the child’s legal custodian, guardian or parent may petition to revoke or amend it for good cause, no more than once in any two-year period, and the court may grant or deny the petition; subsection (d) has a similar once-every-two-years petition for its own awards. If the petitioner can bear the cost without unreasonable financial hardship, the court may, at that petitioner’s sole expense, appoint a guardian ad litem and send the issue to mediation; without mediation or an agreement, the court sets a hearing. The court may also order a custodial parent to notify a family member of the child’s public performances, such as concerts, graduations, recitals and games, and it sets priority among competing actions. Westlaw’s editorial note points readers to two Georgia Supreme Court decisions on the section’s validity, Brooks v. Parkerson (1995) and Patten v. Ardis (2018). Both came before the 2022 and 2025 amendments, so anyone relying on this section should read them alongside the current text.