Children in Italy win the legal right not to visit their grandparents  trends now

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Italy's top court has ruled that children are under no obligation to see their grandparents and cannot be forced to do so.

The ruling, made in Italy's Court of Cassation, came in response to an appeal brought by the parents of two children against an earlier decision made by a juvenile court in Milan.

That court stipulated that the youngsters had to spend time with their paternal grandparents after the elderly couple complained the children's parents had 'established obstacles' preventing them from maintaining contact amid an ongoing family feud. 

The juvenile court in 2019 ordered social worker-supervised meetings between the children and the grandparents in spite of the parents' objections, and an attempt on the parents' behalf to appeal the decision failed.

But the Court of Cassation this week overturned the decision, recognising that while there is 'no doubt' that the two children would 'benefit from a bond with the articulated line of generations', the children themselves had expressed their distaste at being forced to see their grandparents given their fractured relationship.