A million children in Britain are banned from seeing their grandparents because of family breakdown. Now the forgotten victims are fighting back...
By Diana Appleyard
Last updated at 8:13 AM on 29th October 2008
Margaret Deuchar's cosy front room is filled with photographs of her granddaughters. Pictures of the girls as babies, toddlers taking their first, faltering steps and sitting with their hair in neat bunches with their grandparents beaming beside them.
Margaret, 64, points to the pictures proudly - but her eyes fill with tears as she talks about the grandchildren she adores.
Because the children in the pictures - raised by their grandparents after their mother died suddenly - were later torn from Margaret's arms, innocent victims of their father's new relationship and a legal system that gives loving grandparents no rights at all.
No more rights than a stranger: A million children in Britain are banned from seeing their grandparents when families breakdown
Margaret was forced to spend £5,000 of her life's savings, and go through a year-long legal battle to be allowed limited visitation rights.
She says softly: 'We were allowed only one visit every five or six weeks. Just a few precious hours to try to be the grandparents the girls need so badly. It's been so hard.
When we first met up with the girls after nearly a year apart, Sophie clung to me and said: "Why can't we come and stay with you?" and it nearly broke my heart.
'I simply didn't have an answer. How can you tell a child you love that her father's new partner doesn't want you in their lives?'
Sadly, Margaret and husband Jimmy are not alone in their anguish. More and more grandparents are finding that, through divorce, relationship breakdown or bereavement, they are being ripped out of the lives of the grandchildren they love so much.
It is estimated that there are more than a million grandchildren in the UK who are not allowed to see their grandparents.
And with divorce figures ever rising, this sad statistic can only get worse. There is a bleak incomprehension among this generation of ostracised grandparents.
As Jimmy Deuchars says: 'We are the old guard, a generation who believe marriage is for life. Grandparents provide a vital part of the secure base that a child needs to grow up without damage.
'The family should be rock solid and unquestioning. That concept has all but disappeared today.'
'We were cut out of their lives'
Family life for Jimmy and Margaret was torn apart 15 years ago when their 25-year-old daughter was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. She had just given birth to her younger daughter, Charlotte, and made a heartbreaking plea to her parents as she lay dying.
Jimmy, from Glasgow, falters as he recalls the vows made that day. 'It was just before she died. We were sitting at her hospital bedside and she clung to us and said: "Please, please look after the girls."
'We were all in shock but we held her, kissed her and reassured her that Sophie, then two, and newborn Charlotte would be loved and cared for by us for the rest of our lives.'
Grieving for their mother, the two girls embraced the stability of their grandparents' home. But after three years everything changed.
Margaret recalls: 'Our son-in-law met a new partner, who lived in Liverpool. I don't think she ever really wanted the girls, but she wanted him.
'He scooped them up and took them down to live with her in Liverpool. She didn't want anything to do with his late wife's family, and we were simply cut out of their lives.
'We were told we would be allowed to see them every month, but then contact just slipped away - it was "too cold" to bring them north, or they were busy.
'For at least six months we did not see them at all, which broke our hearts. My husband said he didn't want to go on living if he couldn't see his granddaughters, which was why we took legal action so quickly.'
For this gentle couple, whose lives have always revolved around family, the shock was immense. 'I could not believe anyone would do this,' Jimmy says. 'We were the girls' security. They loved their dad, but they relied on us.'
Like many other grandparents before them, Jimmy and Margaret were utterly horrified to discover they had no more rights to see their grandchildren than a stranger.
'We're not wealthy, but we knew we had to do something. We saw a lawyer, and said we had to battle this out in the courts,' Margaret says.
The forgotten victims: Many grandparents are denied access to their grandchildren out of spite when parents separate
After a year of wrangling, it was agreed they could see the girls once a month.
'It was heart-breaking, but better than nothing.' Jimmy says, 'When we saw them after all that time apart, we were all crying.
'We met up halfway between Glasgow and Liverpool, at Carlisle Castle, and as they came running up to us with their arms outstretched, we both burst into tears.'
For the next three years, the couple drove to Carlisle every month to see their granddaughters.
'There were always a thousand hugs and kisses. They'd ask us: "Why? Why couldn't we see you, Grandad?" 'What could we say? We took them out for lunch, they ran about in the castle grounds, and then it would be time to say goodbye.
'Every time it was so painful, and I'd drive home with my wife in floods of tears.'
Jimmy points to the photographs of his granddaughters. The couple see the girls, now 15 and 17, around 11 times a year, including holidays.
'They are the most important thing in our lives,' he says. It is a tragic truth that all too often in the bitter fallout from a divorce or break-up, children are used as pawns to 'punish' the other partner - while the grandparents are caught up in this emotional blackmail.
In 90 per cent of cases, as women generally win custody of the children, it is the ex-husband and his parents who are cast out into the cold.
After his experience, Jimmy Deuchars is campaigning for a change in the law.
'We need this Charter for Grandchildren' he says. 'The relationship between a young child and a grandparent is so special, and yet there are a million children in the UK wondering what they did that is so bad they're no longer allowed to see granny or grandpa.'
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