TAMPA, Fla. — When Sheila Mayeski lost her oldest daughter to drug addiction two years ago, she never expected that, eventually, she’d lose the right to see her only grandchild too.
This month marks seven months since she held her now 7-year-old granddaughter.
Mayeski described her last visit with her granddaughter was at a restaurant on Christmas eve.
“She saw me and looked up and then looked at me and ran really fast. I call it a monkey hug. She gave me the whole hug. We sat together for two hours, and she couldn't take her eyes off me. She kept nestling into me and she was so happy to get to be with us again,” Mayeski said.
For nearly all the child’s young life, Mayeski said, she and her family have been a staple.
Grandma was there for the baby’s birth and her first steps. Mayeski’s daughter and her granddaughter even lived with her and her husband for the child’s first few years.
But Mayeski said after her daughter lost her battle with addiction in 2022, her role as grandma seemed to also slowly die when her ex son-in-law went to court and got full custody of his daughter last year. We reached out to the child’s father but have not heard back from him.
Despite a mediation agreement dad signed agreeing a relationship with the child’s maternal grandma was “in the child’s best interest” and that he would use “good faith efforts to encourage and facilitate” that relationship, Mayeski said that for the past few months she and her family have been increasingly cut off.
“We can't even talk to her over the phone right now” she said. “There needs to be a protection in the state of Florida for grandchildren and grandparents to be able to maintain a connection once a child has passed away,” Mayeski said.
Mayeski has a meeting with a Florida lawmaker later this month and hopes her story helps inspire lawmakers to make changes that give grandparents more ability to petition the courts for visitation rights.
Unlike some other states, in Florida grandparents are only allowed to petition courts for visitation under very narrow circumstances including if a parent is deceased, missing or in a persistent vegetative state and the other parent is convicted of a felony or other violent crime.
In 2022, after the murder of an FSU professor, the state’s law expanded to also include cases where one parent is found responsible for the death of another parent.
Since her daughter’s death didn’t fall under these categories, Mayeski has no case to bring to court.
“In our family's eyes, what difference does it make how my child passed away? We've still lost that connection and that's just not fair to my granddaughter and it's not fair to me,” she told us.
“We're not talking about custody, we're talking about just visitation and the courts will not even consider it,” explained Eric Maier, a family law attorney in Tampa.
Maier doesn’t represent the Mayeskis but told us Florida’s grandparent rights are among the most restrictive in the country.
While efforts to expand grandparent rights in Florida have gone on for years, Florida’s Supreme Court has found them unconstitutional. Florida’s constitution and the US Constitution also include privacy rights for parents that make it tough to expand grandparent rights.
“The current law is the result of Florida Supreme Court decisions saying parents have a constitutional right to make decisions for their children and that includes deciding whether they see their grandparents or not,” Maier explained.
For Sheila Mayeski, time with her granddaughter is now spent by looking back at photo books and praying somehow, someday the state will step in to help her and her family make new ones.
“She means everything to me. She's my granddaughter and I love her. I just want to be able to call her up on her birthday. I just want to be able to see her and celebrate her on holidays and overnights again, I just want to be a grandma,” she said.
