Reed v. Reed, an appeal decided Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Superior Court (Judge Mary Jane Bowes, joined by Judges Mary Murray and Jill Beck), involved a paternal grandfather seeking shared legal custody and partial physical custody of two children (N.R. and M.R., ages 8 and 10 as of the time of the appellate decision). Many states allow grandparents shared custody in some situations, especially when their child (the grandchildren’s parent) is dead, as was the case here. But, to oversimplify to some extent, they generally require some showing of failings on the part of the other parent.
In this case, the trial court did indeed rule for the grandfather, but the appellate court disagreed. An excerpt from the trial court’s opinion (other portions of the trial court’s opinion are discussed by the appellate opinion, so I haven’t excerpted them here, but you can see a lot more here):