Tennessee Grandparents' Rights: Hawk v. Hawk and the Substantial Harm Standard

Grandparents in Tennessee do not have automatic rights to see their grandchildren. A fit parent's own decision about who spends time with a child carries real constitutional weight, and Tennessee's courts recognized that seven years before the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Troxel v. Granville decision made it the national rule. That head start matters: Tennessee's grandparent-visitation law is shaped as much by its own state constitution as by anything federal courts later required.

This guide covers Tennessee's statute, the state supreme court decision that set its constitutional floor, the separate custody track, adoption cutoffs, and what filing actually involves.

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

What Tennessee's Grandparent Visitation Law Says

Tennessee's dedicated grandparent-visitation statute, Tenn. Code Ann. § 36-6-306, most recently amended in 2018, is one of the more fully built-out visitation laws in the country. Unlike states that let any grandparent file at any time, Tennessee requires a specific triggering event before a petition can even be filed: a parent's death, a pending divorce or legal separation, a change in the child's parents' marital status, a parent's absence of six months or more, the child having lived with the grandparent for 12 months or more before being removed, a significant relationship of 12 months or more being severed or substantially reduced, or another state already having ordered grandparent visitation.

Once a grandparent has standing to file, the statute applies a «danger of substantial harm» standard: the court must find that denying visitation would present a real risk of substantial harm to the child, not merely that visitation would be nice to have. Two built-in rebuttable presumptions of harm work in the grandparent's favor in narrower circumstances: if the child lived with the grandparent for 12 months or more and was then removed, or if the child's parent has died and the petitioning grandparent is that deceased parent's own parent.

A separate, narrower statute, § 36-6-302, applies only when a parent is unfit or absent and the child has already been removed and placed in licensed foster or agency care, a different and more limited scenario than the general § 36-6-306 route.

Hawk v. Hawk: Tennessee's Own Constitutional Rule

Tennessee's grandparent-visitation law cannot be understood from the statute text alone, because the statute itself grew out of a state supreme court decision that predates the U.S. Supreme Court's involvement in this area entirely.

In Hawk v. Hawk, 855 S.W.2d 573 (Tenn. 1993), the Tennessee Supreme Court held that Article I, Section 8 of the Tennessee Constitution, the state's own due process and privacy protections, bars a court from overriding an intact, fit, married couple's joint decision to deny grandparent visitation without a threshold finding of substantial danger of harm to the child. The trial court's earlier grant of extensive visitation, made without any finding that the parents were unfit, was reversed as an unconstitutional application of the grandparent-visitation law that existed at the time. The Tennessee Supreme Court decided the case entirely on state constitutional grounds, without reaching the federal question, seven years before Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000), addressed similar territory for the whole country.

The practical result is that Tennessee's current statute, with its substantial-harm standard and enumerated triggers, was built to match a constitutional floor the state's own courts had already set. This is genuinely one of the more protective-of-parents standards in the country, and it means a Tennessee grandparent needs a real, fact-specific case, not just a sympathetic family story, to succeed.

Custody vs. Visitation Are Different Things

Visitation and custody are separate legal questions in Tennessee. The § 36-6-306 and § 36-6-302 statutes cover only visitation, meaning scheduled time with a grandchild who continues to live with a parent or other custodian. Tennessee does not have a general codified statute letting a grandparent petition for custody in a private dispute with a fit parent the way it has one for visitation. The permanent guardianship statute (Tenn. Code Ann. § 37-1-802) is the closest codified vehicle, but it operates only after a formal dependency adjudication in juvenile court, not as a freestanding option for a grandparent who simply wants custody. Tennessee case law reportedly fills that gap for private custody disputes outside the juvenile-court track, though the specific case controlling that area was not independently confirmed for this guide. See can grandparents get custody for how that harder track generally works.

Adoption Cutoff

Under § 36-6-306(d), if a relative or stepparent adopts the child, the visitation statute continues to apply. If any other person adopts the child, previously granted visitation rights automatically end upon the adoption. Under § 36-6-302(b), the narrower foster-care-related route similarly does not apply once the child is adopted by anyone other than a stepparent or other relative.

Court Procedure

Several of the § 36-6-306 triggers, such as a parent's six-month absence or a severed significant relationship, do not require a pending divorce or custody case, so an independent visitation action is available in those circumstances. No official statewide fee schedule was located for this guide; confirm current filing costs with the clerk of the court handling family matters in your county.

Before You File: Mediation and the Real Cost of Litigation

Tennessee's substantial-harm standard means a visitation case here is a real evidentiary undertaking, not a formality. Hawk v. Hawk's legacy means an intact, fit family's joint decision gets serious constitutional weight, and courts will not grant visitation on «we miss the kids» alone. Litigation is adversarial toward the child's own parent, can take a year or longer, and carries real financial and relational cost no matter how the case turns out.

Before filing, most families are better served by trying mediation or a direct, calm conversation first. If informal efforts do not resolve the conflict, a Tennessee family-law attorney can assess whether the specific facts plausibly reach one of the statute's triggers and the substantial-harm standard before a petition is ever filed.

Related Tennessee Resources

For the broader family-law picture in Tennessee, see Tennessee child custody laws and Tennessee divorce laws. For the nationwide picture on this topic, see grandparent visitation rights, can grandparents get custody, and the grandparents' rights by state hub.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about Tennessee grandparent-visitation law. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Verify current statutory text and procedural details with the Tennessee General Assembly, the clerk of the court handling your case, or a licensed Tennessee attorney before relying on anything here for a specific situation.

---

Last updated: 2026-08-12.