What exactly is a grandparent?
That's the question the Colorado Supreme Court was asked to answer in a case involving three orphaned children.
First, let's cover the tragic background: in 2020, Brandon Sullivan killed his wife Amanda and then himself. The couple left behind a 2-year-old son and two infant twins.
Amanda's parents, Suzanne and August Nicolas, took charge of the children and later adopted them as their own. However, Brandon's parents still wanted to see their grandchildren, so they filed for grandparent visitation rights, and those rights were granted.
But the Nicolases didn't want to share their grandchildren with the parents of their daughter's murderer.
So, the Nicolases filed to get the visitation rights removed.
And lost.
Both the lower court and the court of appeals ruled that the three children were clearly the Sullivans' grandchildren, so they had standing to file for visitation.
However, the Nicolases appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court literally redefined what a grandparent is in their ruling:
We now determine that grandparent standing is limited by section 19-1-103(70)(a), C.R.S. (2021), to one who is presently the parent of a child's father or mother. Accordingly, following an adoption, the parents of a child's former mother or father are no longer 'grandparents' under the statute. We therefore hold that after children are adopted, the parents of a deceased father or mother lack standing to seek grandparent visitation.
So these grandparents have now lost both their son and their grandchildren.
Essentially, this ruling says that in Colorado it's no longer biology that determines who a grandparent is.
It's the state.
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