Maryland Grandparents' Rights: The Koshko Standard Behind a Bare Statute

Maryland is the clearest example anywhere in this comparison of why reading only the statute is a mistake. Maryland's grandparent-visitation law is two sentences long, with no trigger, no presumption, and no mention of harm. A reader who stopped there would badly underestimate how hard it actually is to win a contested case in Maryland. The real law lives almost entirely in one Court of Appeals decision.

No grandparent in Maryland, or anywhere in the country, has an automatic right to visitation. A fit parent's decision gets real constitutional weight, and Maryland's courts have built a genuinely protective standard around that principle, entirely through case law rather than statute.

Information last verified on 2026-08-12. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Maryland's Visitation Statute Is Barely a Statute

Family Law Section 9-102 is short enough to quote in full: an equity court may consider a petition for reasonable visitation of a grandchild by a grandparent, and if the court finds it to be in the child's best interests, may grant visitation rights. That is the entire operative text. There is no divorce-only or death-only trigger, no presumption in either direction, and no mention of harm. Any grandparent may petition at any time.

Taken at face value, that reads like an easy standard to meet. It is not, and understanding why requires looking past the statute entirely.

Koshko v. Haining: The Real Standard

Koshko v. Haining, 398 Md. 404, 921 A.2d 171 (2007), is the case that actually governs Maryland grandparent-visitation petitions. The Maryland Court of Appeals held that because a grandparent-visitation order directly and substantially interferes with a fundamental parental right, strict scrutiny applies, and the bare statutory text has to be construed narrowly to survive that scrutiny. The court built in a threshold requirement that does not appear anywhere in Section 9-102's own words: before a court may even reach a best-interest analysis, the grandparent must first prove either that the parent is unfit, or that exceptional circumstances exist that would have a significant deleterious effect on the child if visitation is denied.

That threshold is a real, meaningfully protective bar, not a formality. Koshko overruled a line of earlier, more permissive Maryland decisions to get there. The legislature never rewrote Section 9-102's text to reflect any of this. If you read only the statute, you would have no idea this threshold exists, which is exactly the kind of gap this cluster of articles is meant to correct.

Custody: Also Entirely Case Law, With Two Different Paths

Maryland's third-party custody framework, like its visitation framework, has never been codified. It runs through two separate Court of Appeals decisions that lead to very different outcomes depending on the grandparent's actual relationship with the child.

McDermott v. Dougherty, 385 Md. 320, 869 A.2d 751 (2005), governs most grandparents. It requires a "pure" third party, meaning someone who has not functioned as a co-equal parent, to clear the same unfitness-or-exceptional-circumstances threshold as Koshko before a court will even reach a best-interest analysis for custody. The decision specifically notes that ordinary childcare or employment arrangements alone do not qualify as exceptional circumstances, which rules out a common fact pattern where a grandparent has simply helped with childcare.

Conover v. Conover, 450 Md. 51, 146 A.3d 433 (2016), creates a meaningfully easier alternative for a narrower group: a grandparent who has actually functioned as a co-parent, with the legal parent's consent, may qualify as a "de facto parent." That status requires no unfitness or exceptional-circumstances showing at all, and gets direct best-interest review, using a four-factor test asking whether the legal parent consented to and fostered the relationship, whether the petitioner and child lived together, whether the petitioner assumed significant parental responsibilities without compensation, and whether a bonded, dependent parent-child relationship formed. Conover arose in a same-sex co-parent case, but its doctrine is not textually limited to that fact pattern. A grandparent who has genuinely co-parented a grandchild with the parent's consent could potentially qualify, though this is a fact-specific, high bar distinct from ordinary grandparenting, and most grandparents will not meet it. For the general custody framework, see Maryland child custody laws.

Adoption: An Open Question

Family Law Section 5-3B-25 provides that after an adoption order, the child is treated as the adoptive parent's own for all purposes, and each living biological parent is relieved of parental duties and loses parental rights, though inheritance rights between the adoptee and biological relatives are handled separately under the Estates and Trusts Article. The statute's text contains no express grandparent-visitation carve-out. Whether a Maryland court would nonetheless preserve a pre-existing grandparent visitation order after a stepparent adoption, as many other states do by statute, was not resolved by any Maryland authority found in researching this page. That is a genuine gap, not a settled rule in either direction, and a grandparent facing this situation should get counsel involved rather than assume an outcome.

Filing for Visitation: Court, Process, and Cost

Maryland grandparent-visitation petitions are filed in equity court, a term confirmed directly in Section 9-102's own text; Maryland circuit courts sitting in equity handle these matters. The statute does not appear to require a pending divorce or custody case as a precondition, so a standalone petition looks possible, though the Koshko threshold applies regardless of how the case arrives in court.

There is no official statewide fee schedule found for this petition. Equity-court filing fees are typically set at the county level, so confirm the current amount with the circuit court where you plan to file.

Consider Mediation Before You File

Given how demanding the Koshko threshold is, a contested Maryland petition is a genuinely uphill, expensive fight, and filing itself can deepen a family rift regardless of outcome. Before filing, consider a direct conversation with the parent if that is realistic, a trusted family member as an intermediary, or a mediator experienced in family disputes. Many Maryland circuit courts encourage or require mediation once a case is filed.

What Are Your Realistic Odds in Maryland?

Maryland sits among the hardest states to win in this comparison, precisely because the constitutional threshold applies before a court even looks at the child's best interest. A grandparent alleging genuine parental unfitness, or exceptional circumstances with real, demonstrable harm to the child, has a path forward, and a grandparent who has actually functioned as a co-parent with the parent's consent may have the easier Conover de facto-parent route available for custody specifically. A grandparent whose case rests mainly on wanting more contact, without either of those showings, faces a genuinely difficult case under Koshko. If you decide to pursue a petition, a family-law attorney licensed in Maryland can assess whether your specific facts can meet this threshold before you file.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about Maryland grandparent visitation and custody law. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. This area of Maryland law is built almost entirely from court decisions rather than statutory text, and outcomes depend heavily on the specific facts of a family's situation. Verify current details with the court where you plan to file or a licensed Maryland attorney before relying on anything here for a specific situation.

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Last updated: 2026-08-12.