There has been contradictory evidence about her time in the system; in one episode, Brennan stated that her grandfather got her out of the foster system, but in a later episode, she indicates that she never knew her grandparents (possibly the two references are to two separate sets of grandparents, paternal and maternal). However, taking into consideration the fact that Brennan's parents had assumed new identities when she was three years old, the grandfather who had taken her in from her time in the foster system may not have been her biological grandfather.