How Courts Can Help Keep Families Together

On Kinship Care Month and National Grandparents Week, I’m excited to share my team’s report that just came out today. We spotlight a specific type of court-authorized kinship care called child – or minor – guardianship. Legal guardianship through the courts can be a complicated, tricky process for families. I saw this firsthand from a court self-help center, when I worked with a grandmother navigating a guardianship case in San Francisco. In every court that I’ve worked, I’ve seen people come back again and again due to minor procedural deficiencies, panicking because their families were at risk of being broken apart or because their child wasn’t going to get to enroll in school or go to the doctor. And I wondered, does it have to be this hard? And what made it this hard in the first place?

I’ve finally come full circle with my colleagues at Pew to unpack the origins of minor guardianship and the policies and processes that can add unnecessary complexity to a family’s journey. We identify ways that court leaders and policymakers can make it easier for families to choose which path makes the most sense for their needs, and ultimately, for families to stay together.

At a time when the country continues to grapple with tragedies of the opioid epidemic and COVID-19, grandparents or kin have stepped up to care for young children. Our study highlights that there are nearly 4 million children today who are living with a nonparent caregiver (like a grandparent). And as of 2018, grandparents are taking care of their grandchildren for longer periods of about five or more years.

This signals a stark shift from when guardianship policies were first written and implemented. Historically, courts granted minor guardianship upon the death of a child’s parents. But legal guardianship status has expanded, especially since the late 20th century, to include cases in which living parents cannot or will not take responsibility for their children, for reasons ranging from poor health to incarceration, from substance use to military deployment.

While courts are doing their best to process guardianship cases, they are often burdened with policies that are out of date and do not serve today’s caregivers or parents as well as they could.

Judge David Keenan at King County Superior Court notes, “many of the petitioners that come into my court are grandmothers who are trying to navigate the system because one or both of the grandchild’s parents are incarcerated, struggling with opioids, or just disappeared. Grandma needs to make doctor appointments for the child or take them to school, but she’s not entitled to and can’t afford an attorney. And so she’s trying to figure it out on her own.”

Read our report and see how your state handles guardianship cases – and in the meantime, let’s continue to celebrate all the kinship caregivers who give their time, attention, and dedication in raising every child like their own.