Is it any wonder why we have such little respect for judges.

The decisions that they make, at times, are mind-boggling at best; and byzantine at worst!

The grandmother of a Tinton Falls boy illegally kept in Brazil for four years will get a chance to fight in court for visitation with him after an appellate court panel today ordered a hearing.

Silvana Bianchi Ribeiro, who’s the Brazilian grandmother of d Sean Goldman Is asking the panel to reverse the nearly $90,000 in legal fees assessed against her.

Judge Michael Guadagno decided last year to refuse the woman from visiting her grandson…however, the appellate panel said she should get a chance to prove terminating the relationship would be harmful to the boy.


Following so far?

She keeps the kid away from his biological father, with the complicity of the Brazilian courts for the majority of his childhood, and expects an appellate panel to rule on her behalf that her not being able to see her grandson would be to his detriment.

And, they’re willing to grant her a hearing!

Just the act of ruling that she may have a case is beyond anyone’s logic!

Goldman said he would allow visitation, if, among other conditions, his former in-laws dropped a Brazilian lawsuit seeking custody of Sean.

Guadagno had harsh words for Ribeiro’s litigation in his ruling last year, but the appellate decision had some criticism for Goldman yesterday.

Judges Ronald Graves, Jonathan Harris and Ellen Koblitz said Goldman’s demand to drop all litigation as a condition of visitation was “unduly onerous” and a “heavy, if not, impossible burden” on her because it is a lawsuit brought by Bianchi’s new husband.

Although the decision did not mention Guadagno by name, it said he was “misguided in focusing on the grandparents’ support of their daughter’s illegal retention” of Sean when he should have considered whether continued visitation would have been in the boy’s best interests.

The court would not act on Ribeiro’s request for interim visitation or a court-appointed attorney to represent Sean.

She had also asked for Guadagno to be taken off the case, but Guadagno’s temporary reassignment to the appellate division made that point moot.

Guadagno is the only one with any sliver of sense in this whole sordid tale.

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