Resolving a difference of views between two panels of the state’s intermediate Court of Appeals, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled on September 19 that state statutes providing that the husband of a woman who gives birth to a child after undergoing donor insemination with the husband’s consent is a legal parent of the child must extend equally to the wife of a woman who gives birth to a child after undergoing anonymous donor insemination with … <Read More>
When a child is born to a woman married to another woman, both women should be listed as parents on the child’s birth certificate. So ruled the Supreme Court, voting 6-3 and reversing a decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court on the last day of its October 2016 Term, which was coincidentally the second anniversary of the Court’s historic marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), which provides the basis for … <Read More>
Rockland County Family Court Judge Rachel E. Tanguay, ruling on a question of first impression under New York Law, decided that when a lesbian couple had children together and raised them together as a family for several years before splitting up, the co-parent was entitled to an Order of Filiation recognizing her parental status for all purposes. Judge Tanguay’s ruling in A.F. v. K.H., 2017 N.Y. Slip Op. 27196, 2017 WL 2541877 (Fam. Ct., Rockland … <Read More>
The seven-member Nebraska Supreme Court has unanimously affirmed a decision by Lancaster County District Judge John A. Colborn that a formal published policy adopted by the state in 1995 banning adoptions or foster placements into any household with a “homosexual” in residence was unconstitutional, as was an informal policy adopted more recently by chief executive officers of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services under which “exceptions” could be made in particular cases by … <Read More>
Suffolk County, N.Y., Family Court Judge Theresa Whelan used the doctrine of judicial estoppel to find that a lesbian mother who had previously acknowledged her former partner’s parental status when seeking a support order from the court, was precluded from denying the partner’s parental status in opposition to a custody/visitation petition. Judge Whelan’s April 2, 2013, ruling was published in the New York Law Journal on May 10.
The parties, identified as Estrellita A. and … <Read More>