Children’s right to live with family members

The title of this article talks about the child's right to live with other family members, but who are these family members? They are those who are strangers to the parent-child relationship, in essence we are drawing influence from US law which talks about 'third-party visitations', when we talk about family members we mean all the reference figures, 'attachment figures', those people with whom there is more than one close bond, relationships that involve a positive effect on the child's psychological and emotional development. However, for the sake of method and organisation, this paper will focus mainly on the right of grandchildren and grandparents to live together, making only brief references to other figures. However, I reinforce this position that the right to live together has been - increasingly - recognised in relation to other figures that go beyond the biological bond, denoting the strong influence of de facto situations of affection that the law has been legitimising and protecting.