Grandparents Legal Rights in the State of Florida

Recently, my son's ex wife took our five year old grand daughter out of state to live. I began to investigate if we as grandparents have any rights as far as visitation or if we have any say about our ex daughter-in-law taking our grand daughter out of state.

About six months ago, our son informed us that his ex wife was going to take our grand daughter to North Carolina to live. The ex was engaged to get marry to a man from the state. My son has joint custody but when the divorce took place, it was done through a paralegal who did not word the legal jargon correctly. There is no statement as to whether or not the Mother can move out of state with the child. This issue was not foreseen, as the Mother was born in and raised in our state of Florida. Who would have thought she would move to another state? Also, the paperwork asserts our son gets liberal visitation. That is it. It doesn't state every other weekend, or holidays. It merely says liberal.

We then contacted an attorney to try to block his ex wife's move to North Carolina. The attorney stated all our son could do was file a motion to amend the paperwork. We were informed this could take months or maybe up to a year. Once the motion is filed, if the ex does not come back to the court case, all the state can do is hope she is stopped for a traffic violation and she will be taken in for a bench warrant or a failure to appear in court. Bottom line is, our son is doing it correctly this time by hiring an attorney. He wants the paperwork to be specific this time around.

So where does that leave us as grandparents? I realize my son is missing his daughter, but I am missing a granddaughter that we often babysat and had over for the night. Our relationship is more than that of a grand daughter and a grand parent. We are very close to her.