Blog
Attorney Milena Nowicka
Parents’ departure abroad and care provided by grandparents – what options do you have?
What is foster care?
What types of foster care are there?
When is foster care established? What goals should it pursue?
For how long is foster care established?
When can grandparents exercise foster care over a grandchild?
How to prepare an application to establish foster care for grandparents over a grandchild?
Are you going abroad and leaving your child in the care of grandparents? If so, it is worth taking care of the formalities and establishing foster care. Thanks to this, the grandfather or grandmother will be able to fully take care of raising and caring for their grandchildren, including matters related to education, travel, or medical treatment. So what is foster care and how can it be established?
Entrusting a child to the care of grandparents during your absence may be based on several solutions.
First, you may grant grandparents an authorization. On this basis, they will be able to perform administrative-law and civil-law acts – for example, travel abroad with the minor to visit you. However, you must be aware that such authorization does not allow grandparents to perform all acts falling within the scope of parental authority.
In the case of a longer stay abroad, when grandparents will temporarily fulfill almost all parental duties, the best solution is to entrust them with foster care over the child. In such a case, they will be responsible for exercising care, upbringing, and representing the child in related matters. In short, they will do everything that you are temporarily unable to provide due to staying in another country.
Foster care is intended to protect the interests and welfare of the child. It is applied when biological parents are unable to provide the minor with adequate care and upbringing, and other available measures prove insufficient.
When foster care is established, the child is temporarily placed in a foster family. It should be clearly emphasized that foster care is not adoption. It is a transitional state and assumes that the child will return to their parents once they are able to fulfill their caregiving and upbringing duties again.
At the same time, foster care involves numerous rights and obligations. For this reason, arrangements between you and the grandparents alone are not sufficient to establish it. The court must also be involved in the entire process.
The concept of “foster care” is broad. It may take the form of family foster care provided by a foster family or a family children’s home. Another option is institutional foster care provided by childcare and educational institutions, regional care and therapeutic centers, or interventional pre-adoptive centers.
However, in the context of this article, there is no need to delve into details. What you should know is that the court decides on the form of foster care. If possible, the child is placed in family foster care, preferably provided by relatives (including grandparents). Thanks to this, when living without parents, the child feels safe, and this temporary change is as little stressful as possible.
As you already know, in the case of departure abroad, foster care is intended to provide the child with everything that you cannot offer while staying in another country. In this situation, we may speak of a so-called “temporary obstacle to the exercise of parental authority.”
What does this mean in practice? Pursuant to Article 110 of the Family and Guardianship Code, in the event of such a temporary obstacle, the guardianship court rules to suspend parental authority. It may then also decide that grandparents will exercise foster care over the minor.
Foster care should pursue specific goals:
The regulations do not provide for any specific time limits for establishing foster care. It should last until the parents regain the ability to provide the child with appropriate caregiving and upbringing conditions. In this particular situation, foster care will last until your return from abroad. At that time, the suspension of parental authority will be lifted.
Foster care serves specific purposes, and while it is exercised, the child should be provided with the best possible conditions for upbringing, life, and development. For this reason, the law sets out criteria that grandparents must meet in order to exercise care over a grandson or granddaughter:
If you wish to entrust foster care to grandparents during your absence, you must prepare a special application to the guardianship court.
The application should include a description of your life situation. You should also indicate the persons who, in your opinion, should care for the child during your absence – in this case, the grandparents. The court may entrust foster care only to persons capable of providing the child with appropriate caregiving and upbringing conditions. Therefore, you must demonstrate that the grandparents meet these requirements.
Specific documents must also be attached to the application – including a copy of the child’s birth certificate, a copy of the marriage certificate, a certificate of the amount of income earned by at least one of the grandparents, and a certificate confirming their state of health.
If you want to be sure that the application has been prepared correctly and that all required documents have been attached, it is best to seek the help of a lawyer. This will allow you to complete the formalities more efficiently and save yourself additional stress before leaving abroad.
And what happens if the court considers the application positively? In that case, it will establish foster care in the form of a court order. This order will become enforceable once it becomes final. At the same time, parental authority will be suspended for the duration of the foster care exercised by the grandparents.
During your stay abroad, the grandparents will legally and fully take care of the child’s upbringing and care, as well as make decisions concerning the minor on the spot. You, in turn, will be certain that you are leaving your child in good hands and that all related formalities have been properly taken care of.
