Grandparent Visitation Trial

Location: New York State

My fiance and I have been together for 5 years and he has a son (now 8 years old) from a previous relationship who lives with us fulltime. My fiance has sole physical and legal custody of his son. My stepson's bio mother is rarely involved outside of phone calls and sometimes a visit once a year as she lives in another state now.

My fiance's mother is bringing him to court in hopes to gain visitation rights about a year after we cut her off. We went no contact after years of hostility and threats in person, via phone calls and texts. The grandmother wants to control every aspect of the grandchild and if something isn't done how she wants it, she throws an adult tantrum. She has threatened to get us fired from our jobs, to find a way to get us evicted from our rental, to take custody of her grandchild, put hands on my fiance and more... for years! I wanted to cut her off sooner but my fiance was too forgiving and had dealt with it his entire life. As you can probably tell she despises me. She has mentioned multiple times that she wants nothing to do with MY* children (we have 2 children together).

The grandmother had a longstanding relationship my fiance's son despite her harassment and actions. My step son has mentioned that he wants to see his grandmother to his child lawyer, which doesn't go in our case's favor. The grandmother would buy anything and everything he wanted, only took him to special events (not the other children), and undermined my fiance's parenting especially when it involved discipline and boundaries. My step son doesn't understand the severity of his grandmother's words and actions. We have tried explaining in the most basic way why we are all chosing not to be apart of her life, but it doesn't make a difference to him.

My fiance gave his mother many chances to change her ways and apologize, but she has refused. That led us to this extreme measure. We're not simply withholding her grandchild from seeing her. We as a family want her out of our lives forever, including our other children. His mother has shown little interest in our other 2 children and hasn't developed a relationship with them to file anything with the courts nor does she seem to care to.

My fiance has an attorney and they have already gone through the basic appearance and conference part of court. Obviously neither party has agreed so the trial will start in the fall. We have hundreds of texts of the grandmother's hostility, threats and undermining my fiance's parenting including blaming me for everything that she deems as wrong. In her court document, she dedicated 2 out of 4 pages to smear my name claiming how awful and evil I am. She also made a couple false statements, like my step son has never recieved the therapy he needed, alluding to us trying to hide how horrible we are as parents. My step son has gone to therapy and still does.

This woman went to the extent to follow my fiance and step son to his car after a public game this past winter and tried intimidating him by recording while shouting "So you wont let me see my grandson?!". She also made a comment while filming suggesting that my fiance was driving without my step son buckled in, which he was. She went to most sport games my step son played knowing we did not want her there... trying to approach her grandson, hug him, etc against his dad's wishes.

I felt very confident with my fiance's case, but as I do more research the fact that she had a consistent relationship with my step son will weigh heavily with the judge. Do you think we have a good chance at winning to prove she is not within the child's best interest regardless of their relationship in the past? Can an order of protection be filed in this case to prevent her from approaching us in public spaces in the future? I can't have this woman trying to manipulate and harass us our whole lives.