GRANDPARENTS NOT MUCH NEEDED ANYMORE

Adored or barely tolerated, grandparents were once just a fact of life. You saw them regularly or not, depending on where they lived and how well your parents got on with them, and if you were lucky they were warm repositories of wisdom and unconditional love, and if you were unlucky they were grumpy, distant and boring.

But in recent years a powerful seniors' lobby has won grandparents rights so that now grandparents can go to the Family Court and insist it is in a child's best interest to have regular contact with them, even against the wishes of a parent or parents.

Divorce has created an army of broken-hearted grandparents, estranged from grandchildren for reasons that are not always clear to them. Many grandparents suffer terribly as a result of being sent into exile, often by a daughter-in-law.

But just as there are selfish parents who put their own interests before their children's, so too are there selfish grandparents, emboldened by a sense of entitlement and determined to exercise their rights.

WILL DNA TESTS BE ORDERED FOR MICHAEL JACKSON'S CHILDREN ?

I wonder if the children will be ordered to take a DNA test to see if Debbie Rowe is the biological mother or is she is a surrogate ? And if Michael is the biological father and Joe and Katherine are the biological grandparents ?