Thе grandmother, Kathaleen A. Dufton (grandmother), appeals the order recommended by a Marital Master (Forrest, M.) and approved by the Superior Court (Arnold, J.), dismissing her petition for grandparent visitation. See RSA 461-A:13 (Supp. 2008). We reverse and remand.
The grandmother alleges or the record supports the following facts. The grandmother is the biological mother of "Vicki Shepard, who is the now deceased wife of the respondent, Terry L. Shepard, Jr. (father), and the mother of the minor grandchildren. The grandmother was sixteen years old when she gave birth and relinquished her parental rights to her daughter. The daughter was later adopted.
The grandmother and her daughter reunited when the daughter was twenty-six, and, for the next thirteen years, until the daughter’s untimely death from cancer, they were very close. They vacationed and spent holidays together and visited every other weekend. The grandmother helped hеr daughter through her pregnancies and attended the birth of her two granddaughters. The grandmother celebrated all special occasions with her daughter and granddaughters, including the children’s baptisms and birthdays. When the grandmother’s daughter fell ill with cancer, the grandmother stayed with her at the hospital and accompanied her to all of her doctor visits. When the grandmother’s daughter died in March 2005, the grandmother was at her bedside.
For several months after his wife’s death, the father would not allow the grandmother to visit with her grandchildren. Then, in November 2005, he allowed the grandmother to visit with her granddaughters every other weekend, during school vacation weeks, and over the summer. In the summer of 2007, the children were with the grandmother for six weeks.
At some point thereafter, the father again denied the grandmother visitation with the children, prompting her to file the instant petition. The father moved to dismiss on the grounds that because the grandmother had relinquished her parental rights to her daughter, she was not a “grandparent” of her daughter’s children and, therefore, lacked standing to petition for grandparent visitation.
Initially, the trial court denied the father’s motion. Thе trial court reasoned that the grandmother had standing to seek visitation because she is the biological grandmother of the children and the grandparent visitation statute applies to both adoptive and natural grandparents. See RSA 461-A:13,1. The court ruled that the plain meaning of the word “natural” is “biological.” Accordingly, as the children’s natural grandmother, the grandmother had standing to seek visitation.
The father moved for reconsideration, arguing that: (1) the grandmother is not a natural grandmother because she was not the legal parent of the children’s mother; and (2) it would viоlate his substantive due process rights to allow the grandmother, whom the father characterized as “an unrelated third party,” to petition for visitation.
See Troxel v. Granville,
Usually, in ruling upon a motion to dismiss, the trial cоurt is required to determine whether the allegations contained in a petitioner’s pleadings are sufficient to state a basis upon which relief may be granted.
Ossipee Auto Parts v. Ossipee Planning Board,
The sole issue for our review is whether the grandmother is a “grandmother” within the meaning of the grandparent visitation statute. The interpretation of a statute is a question of law, which we review
de novo. N.H. Dep’t of Envtl. Servs. v. Marino,
RSA 461-A:13, the grandparent visitation statute, provides, in pertinent part:
I. Grandparents, whether adoptive or natural, may petition the court for reasonable rights of visitation with the minor child as provided in paragraph III. The provisions of this section shall not apply in cases where access by the grandparent or grandparents to the minor child has been restricted for any reason prior to or contemporaneous with the divorce, death, rеlinquishment or termination of parental rights, or other cause of the absence of a nuclear family.
This language is identical to the language of RSA 458:17-d, I (1992) (repealed 2005), the predecessor to RSA 461-A:13, I. We have previously interpreted this language to confer standing upon a grandparent, either natural or adoptive, “whenever a grandchild’s nuclear family is the subject of divorce, death, relinquishment or termination of parental rights unless the grandparent’s access to the grandchild has been earlier, or contemporaneously, restricted.”
O’Brien v. O’Brien,
In
O’Brien,
we explained that grandparent visitation rights existed
only
in the absence of the grandchild’s nuclear family.
Id.
We also explained that the reason for the absence of the nuclear family was not limited to “divorce, death, relinquishment or termination of parental rights,” but included “other cause[s].”
Id.
(quotations omitted). Under our interpretation in
O’Brien,
therefore, a grandparent may petition for visitation
only
if the grandchild’s nuclear family is absent for some reason, which includes, but is not
In this case, the grandchildren’s nuclear family is absent because their mother, the grandmother’s daughter, died. Thus, the grandmother is entitled to seek visitation provided that: (1) she is the children’s adoptive or natural grandmother; and (2) her access to the children was not “restricted for any reason” before or contemporaneously with hеr daughter’s death. RSA 461-A:13, I. Because it is the only issue on appeal, we confine our analysis to the first condition: whether the grandmother is the children’s “natural” grandmother for the purposes of the grandparent visitation statute. We first look to the plain meaning of the word “natural,” and agrеe with the grandmother that this word is synonymous with “biological.”
A “natural” parent is a parent who has conceived or “begotten” a child, as opposed to a parent who has adopted the child. WEBSTER’S Third New International Dictionary 1506 (unabridged ed. 2002); see Black’s Law Dictionary 1054 (8th ed. 2004) (“natural” meаns “[o]f or relating to birth”; a “natural child” as distinguished from an “adopted child”). Because the grandmother gave birth to the children’s mother, she is their “natural” grandmother within the meaning of the grandparent visitation statute. See Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, supra at 988 (defining “grandmother” as “the mother of one’s father or mother”).
The father argues that to the extent that we interpret the grandparent visitation statute to allow the grandmother to seek visitation, the statute conflicts with New Hampshire’s adoption laws. We need not decide whether such a conflict exists, however, for even if it does, we hold that the grandpаrent visitation statute, which was first enacted in 1989, see Laws 1989, 314:2, and specifically addresses visitation by natural grandparents, controls.
‘When a conflict exists between two statutes, the later statute will control, especially when the later statute deals with a subject in a specific way and the earlier enactment treats that subject in a general fashion.”
Bel Air Assocs. v. N.H. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs.,
The father next asserts that the grandmother is not the children’s natural grandmother because her rights to them are only derivative of her parental rights to their mother. Having relinquished her parental rights to the children’s mother when the mother was an infant, she hаs no familial relationship to the children.
We rejected a similar proposition in
Preston v. Mercieri,
In the meantime, the mother’s new husband adopted the child. Id. The mother then took the position that the child’s adoption by his stepfather rendered the grandmother an unrelated third party and negated her right to visitation. Id. The grandmother sought to enforce the stipulation. Id. The trial court ruled in her favor, and we affirmed. Id. at 37, 38.
Like the father in this case, the mother argued that New Hampshire’s adoption statutes severed her child from his biological father’s family tree, thus making the grandmother a stranger to the child and extinguishing her visitation rights. Id. at 39. We disagreed, in part, because of the difference between stepparent adoption of an older child and traditional infant adoption. Id. аt 44-45. While in a traditional adoption, “where the child is an infant and emotional bonds have not yet formed with natural relations, there are policy reasons for secrecy which justify a shield of confidentiality ensuring anonymity and precluding post-adoption visitation,” these policy justifiсations do not exist in the case of a stepparent adoption. Id. at 45. In a stepparent adoption of an older child, the child already has a substantial relationship with his grandparents, “and anonymity cannot be achieved because the child knows and remembers his grandparents and retains emotional ties with them after adoption.” Id. In such a case, we observed, it would be “cruel and inhumane” to terminate the relationship between the child and his grandparents abruptly. Id.
For similar reasons, we reject the father’s contention that the grandmothеr’s right to seek visitation under the grandparent visitation statute is merely derivative of her parental rights to the children’s mother. As in Preston, the policy justifications for requiring anonymity or preventing contact between the grandmother and the children of her now deceased daughter are not present. Here, the grandmother and her daughter reunited when the daughter was twenty-six, and had a loving, close relationship until the daughter died thirteen years later. While an adoption decree may serve to “sever[] the child from its own family tree and engraftQ it upon another,.. . such an analogy loses its rationale” when, as in this case, the adopted child has reached maturity and pursued a relationship with the mother who relinquished her. Id. (quotation omitted).
Moreover, as in Preston, anonymity cannot be achieved because of the existing relationship between the grandmother and her daughter’s children. As in Preston, it would be “cruel and inhumane” to terminate that relationship merely because the grandmother relinquished her parental rights to the children’s mother when the mother was an infant. Id. “In a situation such as the present one, where the child’s natural parent has died suddenly, the love and commitment оf grandparents can be a source of security which lessens the trauma occasioned by the parent’s death.” Id.
We conclude, therefore, that the fact that the grandmother relinquished
We also necessarily reject his contention that to interpret the grandparent visitation statute to apply to the grandmоther violates his substantive due process rights because it will allow an “unrelated third party” to seek visitation with his children.
See Troxel,
For all of the above reasons, therefore, we conclude that the grandmother is the children’s “natural” grandmother for the purposes of the grandparent visitation statute.
Reversed and remanded.