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It's not just couples and children who are torn apart by divorce. Divorce also affects the children's relationships with other significant adults in their life such as their grandparents. In many cases, such people who are emotionally invested on the children may feel that they are left without any legal right to maintain contact with the children.
All the 50 states of the country do have some type of grandparent visitation statute, and some of them also do have provisions for stepparents and foster parents. Each state's laws differ in the details (who are allowed to visit and under what circumstances they can visit). Twenty out of 50 states employ restrictive visitation laws, meaning that in case one or both parents have died or are divorcing, only grandparents can be granted visitation rights. In such restrictive states, divorced parents (as long as they agree on it) can even prevent grandparents from having visitation rights on the child.
In other states, the laws are more permissive in that grandparents and caretakers can be given visitation rights as long as it can be proven that it is in the best interest of a child. In such permissive states, if the caretaker is not a blood relative (a stepparent or an adoptive parent, for example), it's possible to press for visitation rights if they have lived with the child for a specified period of time.
The Troxel Decision and its effects on other states.
In 2000, the US Supreme Court made a critical decision concerning the issue of grandparent visitation rights. In the Toxel vs. Grandville case (530 U.S. 57, 2000), the court was reviewing a case from Washington (a permissive state) which had prevented the visitation rights of a grandparent.
In this case, the Supreme Court agreed to the parent's fundamental right to make decisions about how they raise the children, but did not agree that it was unconstitutional to allow the nonparent (the grandparent) visitation rights. The Supreme Court did not agree with the lower court's application of the grandparent visitation statute where it presumed that the grandparent's request for visitation rights was in the interest of the child rather than presuming that the parent's rejection of the visitation rights were done for the interest of the child. As such, the lower court granted the visitation right unless the custodial parent could prove that the visits will affect the children adversely. The Supreme Court thought that the application of the statute did not give adequate protection to the parent's right to decide for her children.
Permissive states don't really interpret grandparent visitation rights as something that significantly interferes with the rights of a parents to control the upbringing they want for their children. Visitation is often only seen as a burden. If this is the case the state only needs to provide a rational reason to justify the burden, and oftentimes the rational reason could be as simple as a grandparent wanting to spend time and maintain a relationship with their grandchildren.
Since the Troxel case, many challenges or appeals regarding decisions on grandparent visitation laws have failed.
For grandparents and caretakers struggling to have visitation rights with children, it may be best to seek mediation services. This means hiring a third party mediator to help you come to an agreement with the parent/s of the child you want to visit. In some state courts, you can't even proceed with your petition for visitation unless you have tried third party mediation first.
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