Ruling on a custody contest between a birth mother and her former same-sex spouse on April 5, the Mississippi Supreme Court avoided mentioning the parental presumption that most states automatically apply for the spouse of a woman who gives birth to a child, relying instead on a doctrine called “equitable estoppel” to prevent the birth mother from contesting her former spouse’s parental status.
Although none of the five written opinions signed by different combinations of … <Read More>
Following a precedent set on January 25 by the Albany-based N.Y. 3rd Department Appellate Division, the Brooklyn-based N.Y. 2nd Department Appellate Division issued a unanimous decision on February 21 ordering the dismissal of a sperm donor’s attempt to establish parentage and get legal visitation with a child born to a married lesbian couple.
As in the earlier case, Christopher YY v. Jessica ZZ & Nichole ZZ, 2018 WL 541768, 2018 N.Y. App. Div. … <Read More>
Relying on a quarter-century old N.Y. Court of Appeals precedent under which a same-sex co-parent is considered a “legal stranger” to the child she was raising with her former partner, the Appellate Division, 4th Department has affirmed a decision by Chautauqua County Family Court Judge Judith S. Claire to dismiss a petition for custody and visitation filed by Brooke S. Barone. The ruling in Barone v. Chapman, 2015 N.Y. App. Div. LEIS 5226, 2015 WL … <Read More>
The standard rule in family law is that the legal spouse of a woman who gives birth to a child is presumed to be the child’s legal parent. Of course, the traditional statement of the rule is that when a married woman gives birth, her husband is presumed to be the child’s father. The original purpose of this doctrine was to protect the legal status of a child, who would be considered “illegitimate” if its … <Read More>
The evil that courts do lives on… On October 4, 2013, the New York Law Journal published Rockland County Family Court Referee Dean Richardson-Mendelson’s opinion in Matter of A.F. v. K.H., V-00918-13, rejecting all attempts by a lesbian co-parent to obtain judicial relief against her former partner’s action of excluding her from contact with the children they had been raising together. The principal barrier to her case is the N.Y. Court of Appeal’s old decision, … <Read More>