For some reason I cannot always quote on this thread:
Taxing Matters, I agree with you that THESE days very few people are effected by gpv suits. However, I can tell you that prior to Troxel courts were handing them out like candy. All a grandparent had to do was ask and they would be given the equivalent of non custodial parent visitation. I could tell you horror story after horror story.
Here is a good one, all true: This was Florida before Florida struck down their laws.
Dad abandoned his family (wife and toddler). Mom went ahead and got a divorce. She had a cordial relationship with dad's parents so they were a regular part of the child's life. Dad's parents were divorced as well. A few years later mom met someone else and got engaged. The grandparents completely panicked and hunted down their son and made him file for custody. We it was clear that wasn't going to happen they both, independently filed for gpv. The judge combined the three cases and assigned a guardian ad litem. The guardian ad litem came back with the recommendation that mom have primary custody but dad get one weekend a month and one day a week, and grandma get one weekend a month and one day a week and grandpa get one weekend a month and one day a week. After adding up all of that time, that left one weekend a month and one day a week plus Sunday from 7 till bedtime at 8:30 for mom, the parent who was supposed to have primary custody.
Luckily the judge decided that was absurd and said that dad and the grandparents would have to share every other weekend and one day a week.
Another good one:
A judge stated in court: "I realize that this grandmother badly abused her minor children and had them removed from her custody by CPS, and lost her parental rights. However, that does not mean that she will abuse her grandchildren therefore I have no choice but to give her visitation."
Another good one: This one was Kentucky
A judge interpreted the law to read that a grandparent was still entitled to visitation even after a stranger adoption. The adoptive parents refused to obey the visitation orders. The judge ordered them to spend every weekend in jail. Their children were farmed out to other family members during the weekend. Eventually the weekend jail killed the adoptive mother because she had a heart condition and they frequently denied her, her medication. The order was later overturned on appeal.
Then there was the mom who spent a year in jail in IL until the IL Supreme court struck down their law and her judge vacated the order. There was a judge in PA who heard a motion from grandparents to deny a mom the right to relocate for a new job, who granted the motion on a temporary basis and then worked hard to broker a deal between the mom and the gps because the whole legal community was in a buzz about it...negatively.
I could literally write a huge book and it would contain only a fraction of the stories that I could tell.