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Posts Tagged ‘parental presumption’

Supreme Court Lets Stand 7th Circuit Decision on Lesbian Spouses and Birth Certificates

Posted on: December 14th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review a ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Henderson v. Box, 947 F.3d 482 (2020), that the state of Indiana must extend to married lesbian couples the same parentage presumption it applies to married different sex couples: that a birth mother’s spouse is presumed to be a parent of her child, that  the child be deemed born “in wedlock,” and that both mothers be named as parents on the birth certificat.  On December 14, the Supreme Court denied the State of Indiana’s petition to review that ruling without explanation or any dissent.  Box v. Henderson, 2020 WL 7327836 (Dec. 14, 2020).

On one hand, this action might be seen as routinely expected, because the Supreme Court decided a similar case from Arkansas exactly this way in 2017.  In Pavan v. Smith, 137 S. Ct. 2075, the Court voted 6-3 to reverse a decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court.  That opinion was issued per curiam, although a close reading would identify the hand of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Jr., author of the Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, in which the Court not only said that same-sex couples have a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment to marry, but also that such marriages must be treated by the states as equal in every respect to the marriages of different sex couples.  In Obergefell, Justice Kennedy specifically mentioned listing on birth certificates as one of the incidents of legal marriage from which same-sex couples had previously been excluded.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissenting opinion in Pavan, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, arguing that the Obergefell ruling did not necessarily compel the conclusion stated by the Court and that the Court should have scheduled briefing and a full hearing on the question rather than issue a summary per curiam ruling.

Since Pavan was decided, Justice Kennedy has retired and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died, being replaced respectively by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, both religious conservatives.  When Indiana filed its petition for review in the Henderson case last spring, Justice Ginsburg was still on the Court and the Pavan v. Smith majority was intact.  The same-sex couples who had filed the lawsuit, represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, did not even file an opposition, assuming the Court would dismiss the petition.  But with Justice Ginsburg’s death and replacement, the calculus had changed, as the Pavan 6-member majority had been reduced to a 4-member minority of the Court.  The Supreme Court then requested the plaintiffs to file a reply to Indiana’s petition for review, and the possibility appeared that the Supreme Court might take up the issue anew.

At the heart of Indiana’s case was the contention that the presumption that a husband is the father is reality-based in biology, and there is no such basis for a reality-based presumption for the wife of a woman who gives birth, although the 7th Circuit had observed that one of the lesbian couples in the case comprised two biological mothers, as the second mother had donated the egg that was gestated by the birth mother.

Be that as it may, Indiana, in common with other states, has never treated the father’s parental status as conclusive, since it could be rebutted by evidence that a different man was the biological father, and ultimately a birth certificate records legal parentage, not biological parentage, as in the new birth certificates that are issued upon a child’s adoption.  The trial court, and ultimately the 7th Circuit, related that Indiana relied on self-reporting by the mother in determining a man’s name to record on a birth certificate, and the form the birth mother is given asks for the name of the father, not explicitly the name of the biological father, making it likely that many men are named as fathers on birth certificates despite the lack of a biological tie to the child.

Ultimately, wrote the 7th Circuit, “The district court’s order requiring Indiana to recognize the children of these plaintiffs as legitimate children, born in wedlock, and to identify both wives in each union as parents, is affirmed.”

By refusing to review this ruling, without any explanation or dissent by the conservative justices, the Supreme Court seems to have put the seal on this issue.  This is particularly reassuring in light of gratuituous comments by Justice Alito (joined by Justice Thomas) in a statement he issued when the Court refused to review former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis’s petition to review an award of damages against her for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Obergefell decision was announced.  Davis v. Ermold, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 3709, 2020 WL 588157 (October 5). In Alito’s statement, and remarks he later delivered to a conservative public forum, Alito sharply criticized the Obergefell decision and suggested that the Court needed to “fix” the problems that ruling created for those with religious objections to same-sex marriage.  This focused renewed attention on the Henderson case and the possibility that the Court would take it and rule in a way that would detract from the equal legal status of same-sex marriages.  The decision not to take this case may represent an important bullet dodged for now.

Mississippi Supreme Court, Rejecting Parental Status for an Anonymous Sperm Donor, Says Birth Mother Can’t Challenge Same-Sex Partner’s Parentage

Posted on: April 12th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

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 judges on the nine member court represent the views of a majority, adding them up produces a holding that the existence of an anonymous sperm donor is irrelevant to the determination of parental rights for the birth mother’s same-sex spouse.  The court reversed a ruling by Judge John S. Grant, III, of the Rankin County Chancery Court, that the failure to obtain a waiver of parental rights from an anonymous sperm donor prevents identifying the birth mother’s spouse as a legal parent of the child.

The various complications in this case arose because the relevant facts played out before marriage equality came to Mississippi as a result of the June 2015 Obergefell decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, and because the retrograde Mississippi legislature has neglected to adopt any statutes concerning who would be considered a parent when a woman or a couple use sperm from an anonymous donor obtained through a sperm bank to conceive a child, leaving the courts to sort this out without any legislative guidance.

The story begins in 1999 when Christina Strickland and Kimberly Jayroe began their relationship.  After several years together, they decided to adopt a child.  The adoption of E.J. was finalized in 2007.  Because Mississippi did not allow joint adoptions by unmarried couples, only Kimberly was the legal adoptive parent of E.J..  In 2009, Christina and Kimberly went to Massachusetts to marry, and Kimberly took Christina’s last name.  The Stricklands then returned to their home in Mississippi, where their marriage was not legally recognized.

In 2010, the Stricklands decided to have a child using “assisted reproductive technology” – A.R.T.  They obtained anonymously donated sperm from a Maryland sperm bank.  Kimberly, whom they jointly decided would be the gestational mother, signed the sperm bank’s form providing that she would “never seek to identify the donor” and that the donor would not be advised of Kimberly’s identity.  In Maryland, Kimberly was then recognized as a married woman and Christina was identified as her spouse in the clinic paperwork.  Both women signed the form acknowledging that they were participating in this process as a married couple and would both be parents of the resulting child.

According to the plurality opinion by Justice David Ishee, “Christina testified that she was involved in and supportive through every step of the conception and pregnancy.”  She also testified that their plan was to go to Massachusetts for the delivery of the baby, so that their marriage would be recognized and both recorded as parents on the birth certificate.  But for medical reasons that did not occur.  Six week before her due date, Kimberly gave birth to the child, Z.S., in an emergency cesarean section surgical procedure in a Mississippi hospital.  Since Mississippi did not recognize the marriage, the birth certificate shows Kimberly as the only parent.

Over the next two years, the women functioned as a family unit, raising both E.J. and Z.S. as co-parents.  Christina stayed home for the first year of Z.S.’s life, while Kimberly worked full time.  Christina testified that both children call her “mom.”  The women separated in January 2013.  Christina continued to visit both children and paid child support, medical and daycare expenses for Z.S.

Now things took a strange twist: On August 13, 2015, while still married to Christina (and at a time, due to the Obergefell decision, when Mississippi would be legally obligated to recognize the marriage is the issue came up in any legal context), Kimberly married a second spouse, whose name and gender are not identified in any of the judge’s opinions, although from the caption of the case it sounds like her new spouse’s surname is Day, since Kimberly is identified in the title of the case as Kimberly Jayroe Strickland Day.

This prompted Christina to file a divorce petition in Harrison County Chancery Court on August 31. On November 16, Kimberly filed a motion for a declaratory judgment that her second marriage was valid and her first marriage “dissolved” in Rankin County Circuit Court.  Christina answered that motion and counterclaimed for divorce and legal and physical custody of both children, who were then living with Kimberly.  She also sought to be named as Z.S.’s legal parent.  The two cases were consolidated in the Rankin County court.  On May 17, 2016, Judge Grant issued an order declaring that Christina and Kimberly’s 2009 Massachusetts marriage was valid and recognized in Mississippi, and therefore that Kimberly’s second marriage was void.

This led the women to negotiate a “consent and stipulation,” in which they agreed that Z.S. was born during their marriage, that they would jointly pay all school expenses for Z.S., and that Kimberly would retain physical and legal custody of E.J., the adoptive child.  They agreed to let the chancery court decide custody, visitation, and child support issues for Z.S., child support and visitation issues for E.J., and the issue of Christina’s parental status toward Z.S.

Judge Grant’s final judgment of divorce, entered on October 16, 2016, ordered Christina to pay child support for both children, and held that Z.S. was born during a valid marriage.  But, he ruled, Z.S. was “a child born during the marriage, but not of the marriage,” so both parties were not considered to be Z.S.’s parents.  The court considered the anonymous sperm donor to be “an absent father” whose legal parentage “precluded a determination that Christina was Z.S.’s legal parent.”  However, Judge Grant held that she was entitled to visitation with Z.S. under a doctrine called “in loco parentis,” which recognizes that somebody who has acted as a parent and bonded with a child as such could be entitled to visitation even though she has no legal relation to the child.

Christina appealed three days later.  At the heart of her argument was that because Z.S. was born while Christina was married to Kimberly, Christina should be deemed the child’s legal parent, and that the anonymous sperm donor, who had no relationship to the child, could not possibly be considered its legal parent.

The Mississippi Supreme Court was in agreement with Christina’s argument that the sperm donor is really out of the picture and should not be considered a parent.  Justice Ishee’s opinion, for himself and Justices Kitchens, King and Beam, declared that Judge Grant’s finding that the sperm donor was the child’s “natural father” was erroneous as a matter of law.  “At the outset,” he wrote, “we are cognizant of the fact that we never before have determined what parental rights, if any, anonymous sperm donors possess in the children conceived through the use of their sperm.  As such, this is an issue of first impression.”

That is a startling statement for a state Supreme Court to make in 2018, when donor insemination has been around for half a century and most states have adopted legislation on the subject.  But, wrote Justice Ishee, there is only one provision of Mississippi law relating to donor insemination, a statute providing that a father cannot seek to disestablish paternity when a child was conceived by “artificial insemination” during the marriage to the child’s mother.  That’s it.  However, wrote Ishee, “Reading this provision, in light of the context before us, the logical conclusion – while not explicit – is that the Legislature never intended for an anonymous sperm donor to have parental rights in a child conceived from his sperm – irrespective of the sex of the married couple that utilized his sperm to have that child.”

“How,” asked Ishee, “on the one hand, can the law contemplate that a donor is a legal parent who must have his rights terminated, while at the same time prohibiting the non-biological father of a child conceived through AI from disestablishing paternity?  These two policies cannot co-exist.”

Ishee rejected Kimberly’s argument that “all of the non-biological parents of children conceived through AI should be required to terminate the sperm donor’s parental rights and then establish parentage through the adoptive process.”  Ishee’s plurality (4 justices) rejected this process as “intrusive, time-consuming, and expensive,” including a ridiculous waste of time for a judge to have to determine that an anonymous sperm donor, who never intended to be the parent of the child, had “abandoned” the child, thus making the child available for adoption by its mother’s spouse.

When a father is “absent” at the time a child is born, the usual process is to try to locate the missing father and inform him of his obligations, but in the case of an anonymous donor, neither the mother nor the court has the necessary information.  In a case like this one, publishing such a notice in a newspaper – the standard way for courts to give notice to missing parties – makes no sense.

On appeal, Christina raised alternative arguments in support of her claims to be Z.S.’s parent.  First, she asked the court to determine a question not addressed by Mississippi statutes: “Whether children born to married parents who give birth to a child via A.R.T. with sperm from an anonymous donor are entitled to the marital presumption that both spouses are their legal parents.”  Alternatively, she asked “Whether the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges requires Mississippi to apply laws relating to the marital presumption of parentage in a gender-neutral manner so as to apply equally to married same-sex couples.”  As another alternative, she asked whether the doctrine of “equitable estoppel” could be used to preclude a birth mother from trying to “disestablish her spouse’s parentage of the couple’s marital child based solely on the absence of a genetic relationship, when the child was born as a result of anonymous donor insemination, to which both spouses consented.” Christina argued that Judge Grant’s order violated constitutionally protected liberty and equality interests by failing to recognize Christina’s parental relationship with Z.S.

Justice Ishee’s opinion ignored all of these arguments except “equitable estoppel,” a doctrine which he explained that Mississippi courts have defined “as the principle by which a party is precluded from denying any material fact, induced by his words or conduct upon which a person relied, whereby the person changed his position in such a way that injury would be suffered if such denial or contrary assertion was allowed.”  Ishee concluded that the doctrine fits this case, and rejected Kimberly’s argument that the decision to have a child through donor insemination was solely hers and the fact that she was married to Christina at the time was irrelevant.  Ishee found that “the evidence in the record belies this assertion,” and cited chapter and verse, right down to the birth announcements the women sent out, which identified the women as “two chicks” who had “hatched” the child.

Since Kimberly represented to Christina all along that Christina would be a parent of Z.S., the doctrine of equitable estoppel blocks her from arguing to the contrary in the context of this divorce proceeding. Judge Grant’s award of “in loco parentis” status to Christina was insufficient, in Ishee’s view, to protect her legitimate interests.  For example, suppose Kimberly married somebody else and petitioned for her new spouse to adopt Z.S.  Christina’s “in loco parentis” status would not entitle her to prevent such an adoption. But if the court recognizes her as a parent, she could.

Thus, without ever mentioning the parental presumption, the plurality opinion, purporting to be speaking for the court as a whole because of the concurring opinions, reversed the chancery court’s ruling that Christina acted “in loco parentis” but “was not an equal parent with parental rights to Z.S.” They sent the case back to Rankin County Chancery Court to determine custody using the multifactorial test that is generally used in a custody contest between legal parents to determine what would be in the best interest of the child, with a “guardian ad litem” appointed to represent Z.S. in the proceedings.

Chief Justice William Waller, Jr., joined “in part” by Justices Randolph, Coleman, Maxwell and Chamberlin, “concurred in part and in the result.” “The narrow issue before the Court,” wrote Waller, “is whether two people legally married who jointly engage in a process of assisted reproduction technology resulting in the natural birth by the gestational mother are both considered parents for purposes of divorce and determination of parental rights of the minor child.  I conclude that they are and that the decision of the chancellor should be reversed and remanded.”  After briefly referring to equitable estoppel, he wrote, “While this Court can use common-law principles to render a decision here, the Legislature should speak directly to the recognition of the legal status of children born during a marriage as a result of assisted reproductive technology.”

Justice Josiah Coleman, concurring in part and dissenting in part, pointed out that the doctrine of “equitable estoppel” had not been argued to Judge Grant, so it should not be a basis for the court’s decision. Thus, he was only joining Judge Waller’s opinion to the extent that Waller agreed that the chancellor erred by according any parental status to the sperm donor.  He would remand the case to the trial court, having reversed that part of the holding, “to allow the parties to present whatever evidence and arguments they wished that accord with the Court’s holding.”  His opinion was joined “in part” by Justices Randolph and Maxwell.

Justice James Maxwell, also concurring in part and dissenting in part, insisted that “what parental rights a sperm donor may or may not have is a policy issue for the Legislature, not the Court,” and since there was no statute on point, “we should be extremely hesitant to draw conclusions about the disestablishment-of-paternity statute, when that statute is wholly inapplicable here. Indeed,” he argued, “it is dangerous for the plurality to weigh in so heavily with what it views to be the best policy, since we all agree the chancellor erroneously inserted this issue into the case.”  His opinion was joined “in part” by Justices Randolph and Coleman.

Finally, Justice Michael Randolph dissented, joined in part by Justices Coleman, Maxwell, and Chamberlin. Randolph said the court should never have addressed equitable estoppel, because that argument was presented for the first time on appeal.  Next, although he agreed that the chancellor erred in declaring an anonymous sperm donor to be the child’s “natural father,” he thought that the “plurality’s blanket assertion that in any case, no anonymous sperm donor will be accorded the burdens and benefits of natural fathers” went too far. He though there was a constitutional issue here, where no attempt had been made to identify and contact the sperm donor.  He also pointed out that the “disestablishment” statute cited by Justice Ishee and then used to support the plurality’s ruling “never was quoted or argued by either party at the trial level,” so also should not have been relied upon in any way by the Supreme Court.  He also found no basis in the record for setting aside the chancellor’s determination that it was “not in the best interest of either child for Christina to have custody.” He pointed out that the chancellor had neglected to address all of the factors specified by Mississippi courts on the record, so the correct approach would be to remand the case to the chancellor “to examine the record and the chancellor’s notes and issue a final decree consistent with this dissent.

This appears to be a victory for Christina, to the extent that enough members of the court agreed with the equitable estoppel approach to make that part of the holding of the court, tossing the case back to the trial court to decide anew whether it is in the best interest of Z.S. for Christina to have joint or primary custody of him as a parent. (Christina is not seeking custody of E.J., just visitation rights.)  But the fractured ruling falls short of the appropriate analysis that would be more beneficial for married LGBT couples in Mississippi: a straightforward acknowledgement that when a married lesbian couple has a child through donor insemination, both of the women will be presumed to be the legal parents of that child, without any need to make a factual showing required for the application of equitable estoppel should any dispute later arise about custody or visitation.  One wonders whether fear of political retribution may have motivate all nine justices to avoid mentioning the parental presumption or invoking Obergefell in support of its application in their various opinions.

Christina is represented by Mississippi attorney Dianne Herman Ellis and Lambda Legal staff attorney Elizabeth Lynn Littrell. Kimberly is represented by Prentiss M. Grant.

N.Y. Appellate Division Rules against Sperm Donor Seeking Paternity Determination and Custody

Posted on: January 25th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

 

In a case showing the pressing need for revision and updating of New York’s Domestic Relations Law to reflect modern-day family realities and effectively take account of the existence of the N.Y. Marriage Equality Act, the Appellate Division, 3rd Department, ruled on January 25 that a sperm donor to a lesbian married couple was “equitably estopped” from seeking a paternity determination regarding the child conceived using his sperm, and countermanded a ruling by Chemung County Family Court Judge Mary Tarantelli that genetic testing be done to confirm the plaintiff’s biological fatherhood.  Christopher YY v. Jessica ZZ and Nichole ZZ, 2018 WL 541768.  There was no dispute between the parties that the child in question was conceived using his sperm.

Jessica and Nichole, the respondents in this case, were married before Jessica gave birth to their child in August 2014. Justice Robert C. Mulvey described the circumstances of the child’s conception: “It is undisputed that the child was conceived, on the second attempt, through an informal artificial insemination process performed in respondents’ home using sperm donated by petitioner.  The parties, who had known one another for a short time through family, had discussed respondents’ desire to have a child together, and petitioner volunteered to donate his sperm for this purpose.  The parties agree that petitioner, with his partner present, knowingly provided his sperm to assist respondents in having a child, and that the wife performed the insemination.  Prior to the insemination, the parties had entered into a written agreement drafted by petitioner that was signed by respondents and petitioner in the presence of his partner.  Pursuant to that written agreement, which was entered into without formalities or the benefit of legal advice, petitioner volunteered to donate his sperm so that respondents could have a child together, expressly waived any claims to paternity with regard to any child conceived from his donated sperm and further waived any right to custody or visitation, and respondents, in turn, waived any claim for child support from petitioner.”  The court noted that Christopher, the petitioner, denied the existence of such a written agreement, but the court found that the testimony by respondents and petitioner’s partner provided a basis for the Family Court’s determination that it did exist.

After the child was born, the parties “disagreed on petitioner’s access to the child, and his partner subsequently admitted in sworn testimony that she had destroyed the only copy of that agreement,” but the court decided that the agreement was only being considered for the purpose of determining the parties’ “understanding, intent and expectations at the time that petitioner donated his sperm and the wife impregnated the mother,” and not as a legally enforceable contract, so its destruction was not critical in this case. The court stated that the respondents lived together with the child as a family, and the petitioner did not see the child until she was one or two months old.

Family Court Judge Tarantelli rejected the mother’s motion to dismiss the proceeding, and, over opposition, granted the petitioner’s request for genetic testing, but agreed to stay the testing order while the mother appealed the ruling. The Appellate Division allowed a direct appeal of the Family Court’s order.

Justice Mulvey reviewed the basic family law principles under which the spouse of a woman who bears a child is presumed to be the child’s legal parent, the child being characterized as a “product of the marriage.” The statutes provide that this presumption can be rebutted through a proceeding establishing that another man than the mother’s husband is the biological father of the child, so that the child is not, literally speaking, a “product of the marriage.”   But, he pointed out, the tests in our antiquated statutes don’t really account for the modern phenomenon of same-sex couples having children through donor insemination, as the donor insemination statute focuses on the legal parental status of a husband who gives written permission for his wife to receive a sperm donation from another man.

“Application of existing case law involving different-gender spouses,” Mulvey wrote, “addressing whether the presumption has been rebutted, to a child born to a same-gender married couple is inherently problematic, as it is not currently scientifically possible for same-gender couples to produce a child that is biologically ‘the product of the marriage.’ . . . If the presumption of legitimacy turns primarily upon biology, as some earlier cases indicate, rather than legal status, it may be automatically rebutted in cases involving same-gender married parents.  This result would seem to conflict with this state’s ‘strong policy in favor of legitimacy,’ which has been described as ‘one of the strongest and most persuasive known to the law.’  Summarily extinguishing the presumption of legitimacy for children born to same-gender married parents would seem to violate the dictates of the Marriage Equality Act,” noting that law’s requirement that married same-sex couples have the same “legal status, effect, right, benefit, privilege, protection or responsibility relating to marriage” as different-sex couples have.  “As the common-law and statutory presumptions of legitimacy predate the Marriage Equality Act,” Mulvey commented, “they will need to be reconsidered.”

While pointing out that “a workable rubric has not yet been developed to afford children the same protection regardless of the gender composition of their parents’ marriage, and the Legislature has not addressed this dilemma, we believe that it must be true that a child born to a same-gender married couple is presumed to be their child and, further, that the presumption of parentage is not defeated solely with proof of the biological fact that, at present, a child cannot be the product of same-gender parents.” The court decided, biology aside, that the petition in this case has not “established, by clear and convincing evidence, that the child is not entitled to the legal status as ‘the product of the marriage,” and thus the presumption is not rebutted and, even if it was because there was no disagreement that petitioner was the only sperm donor, “we find, for reasons to be explained, that the doctrine of equitable estoppel applies to the circumstances here and that it is not in the child’s best interests to grant petitioner’s request for a paternity test.”

The court rejected any argument that because the respondents had proceeded informally and not complied with statutory provisions governing donor insemination in New York, they were precluded from achieving legal recognition for their family. Actually, in past cases the New York courts have not formalistically insisted that parental presumptions don’t apply if the parties failed to follow the donor insemination law to the letter.  As to the application of equitable estoppel to block Christopher’s paternity action, the court cited earlier cases holding that the doctrine “is a defense in a paternity proceeding which, among other applications, precludes a man from asserting his paternity when he acquiesced in the establishment of a strong parent-child bond between the child and another [person].”  This is done to “protect the status interests of a child in an already recognized and operative parent-child relationship.”  In other words, the court is not going to let Christopher interfere in the established relationship that Nichole has with the child her wife bore.

Relating this back to the facts of the case, Mulvey found that the conduct of the parties support blocking Christopher from the paternity action. “He was not involved in the child’s prenatal care or present at her birth, “wrote Mulvey,” did not know her birth date, never attended doctor appointments and did not see her for at least one or two months after her birth.  He was employed, but never paid child support, and provided no financial support…  By his own admission, he donated sperm as a ‘humanitarian’ gesture, to give respondents ‘the gift of life’ and expected only ‘contact’ with the child as a ‘godparent’ by providing her mothers with ‘a break’ or ‘help.’  He never signed an acknowledgement of paternity or asked to do so, and no aspect of his testimony or conduct supports the conclusion that he donated sperm with the expectation that he would have a parental role of any kind in the child’s life, and he never had or attempted to assert such a role.”  On the other hand, the testimony fully supported Nichole’s role as a mother to the child.  The court also pointed out that Christopher didn’t file his petition until the child was seven months old, and was “in an already recognized and operative parent-child relationship” with her birth mother, Jessica, and with her other mother, Nichole.

The court concluded that authorizing genetic testing and allowing the case to proceed was not in the child’s best interest, in light of the existing relationship of the child and her parents.

The court related that a new attorney had been appointed to represent the child in this appeal. She had favored the genetic testing, mainly because of events that have occurred since the Family Court hearing. It seems that the child has been in foster care, and there are neglect petitions pending against the mothers, although the lawyers appearing at the hearing in the Appellate Division did not know the details.  “However,” wrote Mulvey, “we find that the subsequent events, on which we take no position, do not alter our conclusion that respondents established at the [Family Court] hearing that petitioner should be equitably estopped from asserting paternity under the circumstances known to the Family Court at the time of the hearing,” and allowing new matters to be raised at this point “should not be permitted.  Doing so would continue to invite challenges to the then-established family unit into which the child was born, creating instability and uncertainty.”

Jessica is represented by Ouida F. Binnie-Francis of Elmira, N.Y., and Nicholde is represented by Lisa A. Natoli of Norwich. The child is represented by Michelle E. Stone of Vestal.  Christopher is represented by Pamela B. Bleiwas of Ithaca.

Arizona Supreme Court Holds Parental Presumption Applies to Lesbian Married Couples

Posted on: September 19th, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

 

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 her wife’s consent. The ruling in McLaughlin v. McLaughlin, 2017 WL 4126939, is a logical application of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26, 2017, ruling in Pavan v. Smith, which dealt affirmatively with the related question whether a state must recognize the parental status of a same-sex spouse by listing her as a parent on the child’s birth certificate, and of course was ultimately governed by the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges.

The Supreme Court made clear in Pavan that the constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry, earlier recognized by the Court in Obergefell in 2015, is not just about the right to marry and have other states recognize the marriage, but also about the right to enjoy all the benefits and be subject to all the obligations of marriage on an equal basis with different-sex couples.  Applying this principal to an Arizona parentage statute that, by its terms, only applies to the parental rights of men, the Arizona court adopted a gender-neutral construction of the statute, rejecting the argument by one partially dissenting judge that correcting the statute’s constitutional flaw should be left to the legislature.

Kimberly and Suzan were married in California in 2008, during the five-month period between the California Supreme Court’s In re Marriage Cases decision and the adoption of Proposition 8, which enacted a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to different-sex couples.  The California Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the same-sex marriages contracted during that five-month period, such as the McLaughlin marriage, were fully valid under California law.  The women decided to have a child together.  Suzan went through donor insemination, but unsuccessfully.  Kimberly then went through the procedure and became pregnant.  They moved to Arizona during the pregnancy.

Before the birth of their child, they signed a joint parenting agreement in February 2011, in which they declared that Suzan would be a “co-parent” of the child, stating: “Kimberly McLaughlin intends for Suzan McLaughlin to be a second parent to her child, with the same rights, responsibilities, and obligations that a biological parent would have to her child” and that “should the relationship between us end, it is the parties’ intention that the parenting relationship between Suzan McLaughlin and the child shall continue with shared custody, regular visitation, and child support proportional to custody time and income.” State courts generally take the position that such parenting contracts, while evidence of the intent of the parties, is not binding on the court in a subsequent custody determination during a divorce, where the court’s legal role is to determine custody and visitation issues based on the court’s evaluation of the child’s best interests. The women also executed wills naming Suzanne as a part of the child, a boy who was born in June 2011.

Kimberly, a doctor, worked to support the family, and Suzan stayed at home to care for the baby. By the time the child was almost two years old in 2013, the women’s relationship had deteriorated and Kimberly moved out with the child, cutting off Suzan’s contact with her son.  Suzan then filed petitions in state court seeking dissolution of the marriage and legal decision-making and parenting time with the child.  She couldn’t file for a divorce, because Arizona did not recognize same-sex marriages at that time.  She included a constitutional challenge to the state’s anti-gay marriage laws in her lawsuit, and the state intervened to defend its laws.

While Suzan’s case was pending, a federal district court in Arizona declared the state’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional, a result upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court subsequently denied in November 2014 an attempt by other states in the circuit to get the 9th Circuit’s marriage equality rulings reversed.  Of course, on June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling in Obergefell made clear that Arizona would have to recognize Suzan and Kimberly’s California marriage under its divorce and custody laws.  The state dropped its intervention in the case, and Suzan’s lawsuit turned into a divorce case.  But the question remained about her status as a parent to the child, to whom she is not biologically related.

The trial judge in Pima County, Lori B. Jones, confronted a parentage statute stating that “a man is presumed to be the father of the child if he and the mother of the child were married at any time in the ten months immediately preceding the birth or the child is born within ten months after the marriage is terminated.” The parental status under the statute is legal, not biological, although a man could rebut the legal presumption by showing that another man was the biological father or that his wife had conceived through donor insemination without his consent. However, the Arizona laws made clear that if a husband consented to his wife’s donor insemination, he would be presumed to be the child’s legal father.  The problem was the gendered language of the statute.

Wrote Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Scott Bales in describing the trial court’s reasoning in ruling in favor of Suzan, “Based on Obergefell, the court reasoned that it would violate Suzan’s Fourteenth Amendment rights not to afford her the same presumption of paternity that applies to a similarly situated man in an opposite-sex marriage.”  Judge Jones also concluded that in this kind of case the birth mother should not be allowed to attempt to rebut the presumption where it was undisputed that her same-sex spouse had consented to the insemination process and would be obligated to contribute to the support of the child.

Kimberly sought relief from the court of appeals, which was denied. That court both agreed with Judge Jones’ reasoning on the Fourteenth Amendment issue and further reasoned that Kimberly should be “equitably estopped from rebutting Suzan’s presumption of parentage.”  Equitable estoppel is a legal doctrine that courts invoke to prevent a party from attempting to assert a legal right that would be contrary to their prior representations and actions.  In this case, since Kimberly consented to the insemination and contracted with Suzan to recognize her full parental rights toward the child, she could not now turned around and attempt to avoid those actions by showing that Suzan was not the child’s biological father, which Suzan clearly is not.

After the court of appeals issued it opinion in this case, a different division of the state’s court of appeals released a contrary ruling in Turner v. Steiner, 242 Ariz. 494 (2017). By a 2-1 vote, that court “concluded that a female same-sex spouse could not be presumed a legal parent [under the statute] because the presumption is based on biological differences between men and women and Obergefell does not require courts to interpret paternity statutes in a gender-neutral manner.”

The Arizona Supreme Court granted Kemberly’s petition to appeal the court of appeals ruling because application of the parentage statute to same-sex marriages “is a recurring issue of statewide importance.”

Chief Justice Bales’s opinion for the court made clear that one could easily resolve this dispute in favor of Suzan without even referring to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Pavan, because the earlier Obergefell opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy addressed all the salient issues in very clear language.  The idea that Obergefell required only that states allow same-sex couples to marry and recognize as valid legally-contracted same-sex marriages from other states was contrary to the language and reasoning of the Supreme Court.  “In Obergefell,” wrote Bales, “the Court repeatedly framed both the issue and its holding in terms of whether states can deny same-sex couples the same ‘right’ to marriage afforded opposite-sex couples.”  For example, quoting from Kennedy’s opinion: “The Constitution does not permit the State to bar same-sex couples from marriage on the same terms as accorded to couples of the opposite sex,” and further, wrote Bales, “noting harms that result from denying same-sex couples the ‘same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples.’”  In particular, the Supreme Court had emphasized the importance to children of same-sex couples have equal recognition of their families.

“Such broad statements reflect that the plaintiffs in Obergefell sought more than just recognition of same-sex marriages,” wrote Bales, noting that the Michigan plaintiffs in one of the cases consolidated before the Court were a same-sex couple who sought to marry to secure the parental status of both of them to the children they were jointly raising, and, continued Bales, “the benefits attendant to marriage were expressly part of the Court’s rationale for concluding that the Constitution does not permit states to bar same-sex couples from marriage ‘on the same terms.’  It would be inconsistent with Obergefell,” he continued, “to conclude that same-sex couples can legally marry but states can then deny them the same benefits of marriage afforded opposite-sex couples.”  The subsequent decision in Pavan, the Arkansas birth certificate case, just drove home the point in the specific context of parental status and rights.

The Arizona Supreme Court concluded that the benefit of the parental presumption that is enjoyed by the spouse of a woman who gives birth is one of the “benefits of marriage” that must be equally afforded to same-sex couples. It rejected Kimberly’s argument, similar to that of the other panel of the Arizona Court of Appeals, that the statute dealt only with biological parentage.  This was never a particularly logical argument, since the overall statutory scheme in Arizona extended the parental presumption to situations where the man was not the child’s biological father, making it conclusive when he had consented to his wife’s insemination with donor sperm.

The court then faced the question whether the statute should just be struck down as unconstitutional, terminating any parental presumption, or extended through a gender-neutral interpretation to apply to same-sex couples. The court decided that extending the statute was more in line with the legislature’s overall purpose than would be striking it down.  The goal, after all, was to support families and solidify parent-child ties, which was best achieved by extending the parental presumption to lesbian couples.  Thus, the court vacated the decision of the court of appeals and affirmed the decision of Pima County Superior Court Judge Jones, upholding Suzan’s parental status and rights, with details to be worked out in the trial court, hopefully by agreement of the ex-spouses.

The court lost one member on this last point, as Justice Clint Bolick argued in partial dissent that the court was exceeding its role by improperly reinterpreting statutory language to cure the constitutional problem. “The marital presumption that the majority finds unconstitutional and rewrites is not, as the majority characterizes it, a ‘state-benefit statute,’” he insisted.  “Rather, it is part of an integrated, comprehensive statute that serves the highly important and wholly legitimate purpose of providing a mechanism to establish a father’s rights and obligations.”  Viewed on its own, he insisted, it was not unconstitutional.  “A paternity statute does not offend the Constitution because only men can be fathers,” he said, pointing to another opinion by Justice Kennedy in a case upholding different rules for determining a child’s U.S. citizenship based on the citizenship of the mother or the father in a marriage between citizens of different countries.  The majority had rejected Kimberly’s reliance on this decision, but Bolick contended that “it is not the paternity statute that is unconstitutional, but rather the absence of a mechanism to provide parenthood opportunities to single-sex couples on equal terms appropriate to their circumstances.”  He would leave it to the legislature to fix the problem.  Bolick would send the case to the trial court to be decided without any parental presumption, presumably (since he doesn’t spell it out)  leaving the trial court to determine whether it was in the best interest of the child for the woman who was formerly married to the child’s birth mother to have decision-making and visitation rights.

Suzan is represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, whose legal director, Shannon Minter, argued the case in the Arizona Supreme Court, assisted by staff attorneys Emily Haan and Catherina Sakimora, with local counsel Claudia D. Work of Campbell Law Group in Phoenix. Kimberly is represented by Keith Berkshire and Erica L. Gadberry of Berkshire Law Office in Phoenix.   Several amicus briefs were filed with the court, including briefs from the ACLU, a University of Arizona law school clinic, and a group of Arizona Family Law Practitioners.

Nevada Supreme Court Affirms Parental Rights for Former Gay Partner of Adoptive Dad

Posted on: June 28th, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

The Nevada Supreme Court has unanimously affirmed a District Court decision granting a gay man paternity over a child adopted by his former partner.  Four members of the court based their June 22 ruling on the concept of “equitable adoption,” while the other three based their ruling on an interpretation of the state’s “presumption of paternity” under Nevada’s parentage statute, NRS 126.041. The case is Nguyen v. Boynes, 2017 Nev. Adv. Rep. 32, 2017 Nev. LEXIS 45, 2017 WL 2733779.  Justice Ron D. Parraguirre wrote the opinion for the majority of the court, and Justice Lidia S. Stiglich wrote for the concurring justices.

Ken Nguyen and Rob Boynes began dating in November 2009.  “At some time during the relationship,” wrote Justice Parraguirre, “a decision was made to adopt a child.”  They approached Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, but that organization would not arrange joint adoptions for same-sex couples, so the men agreed that Ken would adopt the child and then Rob would later initiate a second-parent adoption.  They went through Catholic Charities’ procedure beginning in July 2012, and in February 2013, Catholic Charities notified Ken that it was placing a newborn child with him for adoption.  Both men “were present to receive the newborn child,” and both participated as parents after the placement.

When Ken’s co-workers arranged a baby shower, it was held at Rob’s house. The child was baptized at the Desert Spring United Methodist Church, with both men standing in as fathers and listed on the baptism certificate.  However, shortly after that they ended their relationship. “Rob asked Ken to add his name to the child’s birth certificate, and Ken refused,” wrote Justice Parraguirre.  The formal adoption by Ken was finalized in October 2013.  “Both parties sat at the plaintiff’s table during the adoption hearing, and Ken reiterated once again that he would not place Rob’s name on the child’s birth certificate, nor would he allow a second-parent adoption.”

Despite Ken’s position on the legal issues, the men continued to share parental duties, as they had done from the outset. Indeed, “Since the child’s first day of placement with Ken, he has primarily been under Rob’s care.”

“The child stayed overnight at Rob’s house during the first night of placement and continued to do so for more than a month,” after which he spent weekends at Ken’s house. After two months of placement, Ken decided to hire a neighbor as a full-time babysitter, but after several weeks they reverted back to their previous arrangement of the child staying with Rob during the week until Ken enrolled the child in daycare in May 2014.  “Rob primarily took the child for doctor visits and provided most of the baby supplies,” wrote Parraguirre.  “Additionally, in November 2013, Rob took the child to North Carolina to visit Rob’s sister during Thanksgiving.”

Rob filed a petition for paternity and custody in the Clark County Family Court Division in May 2014. After a full hearing, Judge Bill Henderson decided that Rob was entitled to a “presumption of paternity” under the Nevada parentage statute, and held that the men were to have joint legal and physical custody.  Judge Henderson also referred to the “equitable adoption” theory in reaching his decision.  Ken appealed the order.

The Supreme Court explained that equitable adoption is “an equitable remedy to enforce an adoption agreement under circumstances where there is a promise to adopt, and in reasonable, foreseeable reliance on that promise a child is placed in a position where harm will result if repudiation is permitted.”

“This case concerns whether there was an agreement by the parties to adopt the child together that was formed at the beginning of the adoption process, and whether accompanying that agreement was an intent and promise by Ken to allow Rob to adopt the child second due to Catholic Charities’ policy disallowing joint adoptions for same-sex couples,” wrote Justice Parraguiree. “The parties do not dispute their non-biological relations with the child,” he continued, so “Nevada’s Uniform Parentage Act is not implicated.  We thus conclude that the equitable adoption doctrine is applicable to enforce an adoption agreement under the unique factual circumstances of this case.”

The Supreme Court agreed with District Judge Henderson that Rob had satisfied the four element test set forth in Nevada’s case law: Intent to adopt, promise to adopt, justifiable reliance, and harm resulting from repudiation. The Family Court’s decision would be reviewed under the “abuse of discretion” standard, so Judge Henderson’s decision to recognize Rob as a father would be upheld if substantial evidence supports it.

The court found evidence supporting every aspect of the four-element test: that the parties intended that both would ultimately be adoptive fathers of the child, that Ken had promised Rob to facilitate his adoption second, and that Rob was an integral factor in the adoption process and was “intimately involved.”  Indeed, there was testimony at the Family Court hearing by officials from Catholic Charities that both men participated in the process, “including the background check, post-placement visits, orientation, and adoption classes.”

Furthermore, from the commencement of the placement of the child with Ken, Ken treated Rob as a second parent and Rob took on parental responsibilities. Furthermore, Rob was regarded as a father to the child by others, who testified at the hearing.  In a footnote, Parraguirre mentioned that “the district court found that the deterioration of Ken and Rob’s relationship during the summer of 2013 seemed to be the driving factor in Ken’s decision to not follow through with the second adoption for Rob.”

The court also found plenty of evidentiary support for Rob’s reliance on Ken’s promise. “Rob dedicated a substantial amount of his time to the adoption process.  Moreover, Rob primarily cared for the child post-placement.”  Rob provided the baby supplies and “made substantial changes to his house and lifestyle to accommodate the child’s needs, which included changing one of the rooms in his house to a nursery.”  The court found that Ken’s repudiation of the promise produced harm: “the deprivation of Rob’s emotional and financial support to the child.”  Since letting Ken repudiate his promise would be to the child’s detriment, “equity cannot allow such a result,” insisted Justice Parraguirre.

The court upheld the grant of joint legal and physical custody, finding that the Judge Henderson had not abused his discretion in light of the trial record, and rejecting Ken’s allegations of disqualifying misconduct by Rob.

The court also rejected Ken’s argument that the parentage and custody award violated his constitutional rights as an adoptive parent. He argued that the district court’s ruling was unprecedented, and had treated the men differently than it would have treated an unmarried heterosexual couple.  “Here,” wrote the court, “Ken does not challenge the constitutionality of a particular statute; rather, he alleges generally that the district court treated the parties differently than it would have a heterosexual couple.  However, ‘child custody determinations are by necessity made on a case-by-case basis,’ and, here, ‘there is nothing to indicate that the ultimate decision of the district court turned on [the couple’s sexual orientation].”

Justice Stiglich, writing for herself and two others, contended that “the Nevada Parentage Act provides a more appropriate analysis in this case than the doctrine of equitable adoption.” She pointed out that in a prior case, St. Mary v. Damon, 309 P.3d 1027 (2013), the court had “clearly concluded that Nevada law does not preclude a child from having two mothers under the Nevada Parentage Act,” stating in that opinion that “the Legislature has recognized that the children of same-sex domestic partners bear no lesser rights to the enjoyment and support of two parents than children born to married heterosexual parents.”

Consequently, she wrote, “Pursuant to St. Mary, if a presumption of parentage can apply to a woman in a same-sex relationship, there appears no reason why the provision of [the parentage statute] cannot apply to a man in a same-sex relationship. Because Rob submitted ample evidence to support the presumption of parentage under [the statute], I concur with the majority’s holding affirming the decision of the district court, but on different grounds.”

Rob is represented by the Pecos Law Group and Bruce I. Shapiro and Jack W. Fleeman, of Henderson, Nevada. Ken is represented by McFarling Law Group and name-partner Emily M. McFarling of Las Vegas.

NCLR Seeks Supreme Court Review of Arkansas Birth Certificate Decision

Posted on: February 15th, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on February 13, seeking review of the Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision that the state was not required under Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), to extend the presumption of parentage to the same-sex spouse of a birth mother for purposes of recording parentage on a birth certificate. Smith v. Pavan, 2016 WL 7156529 (Ark. December 8, 2016), petition for certiorari filed sub nom. Pavan v. Smith, No. 16-992.

The Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision, by a sharply divided court with three strong dissenting opinions, was the first ruling on this question to depart from a post-Obergefell consensus of courts in other jurisdictions that equal marriage rights for same-sex couples necessarily include the equal right to have a spouse recorded as a parent on a birth certificate, despite the lack of a “biological” tie to the child, especially in light of the common practice of automatically recognizing a birth mother’s husband for that purpose, regardless whether he is “biologically related” to the child.

The due process and equal protection issues raised by the Arkansas court’s decision are stark, raising the possibility that the Supreme Court might consider this an appropriate case for a summary reversal, similar to its decision last term to summarily reverse the Alabama Supreme Court’s refusal to accord full faith and credit to a same-sex second parent adoption approved by a Georgia family court in V.L. v. E.L., 136 S. Ct. 1017 (March 7, 2016).  In V.L. the Court moved quickly to reverse the state supreme court ruling based on the certiorari filings, seeing no need for full briefing and hearing on the merits.  That ruling was announced several weeks after the death of Justice Scalia by the eight-member Court, and brought no dissent from any justices, three of whom had dissented in Obergefell.  They implicitly agreed that with Obergefell as a precedent, there was no justification for recognizing any exception to the general rule that adoption decrees are to be recognized when the court granting the adoption clearly had jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter of the adoption petition.  They rejected the Alabama Supreme Court’s reliance on its own interpretation of the Georgia adoption statute as withholding “jurisdiction” from the family court to grant such an adoption.

NCLR petitioned on behalf of two married same-sex couples – Marisa and Terrah Pavan and Leigh and Jana Jacobs. Each couple had married out of state and then, living in Arkansas, had a child conceived through donor insemination.  In both cases, the mothers completed the necessary paper work to get a birth certificate when their children were born.  In both cases, the state health department issued a certificate naming only the birth mother and leaving the space for “father” blank on the birth certificate rather than naming the other mother.  The state insisted that under its statute the automatic listing was limited to a husband of the birth mother.

The women filed suit against the director of the state health department, Dr. Nathaniel Smith, seeking to compel issuance of appropriate birth certificates, together with another couple who were not married when they had their child but who subsequently married after the Obergefell decision and sought an amended birth certificate.  That other couple is no longer in the case, having gone through an adoption proceeding and obtained a new birth certificate naming both mothers.  The Arkansas state trial court construed Obergefell and its own marriage equality decision, Wright v. Smith, to require according equal recognition to same-sex marriages for this purpose, and ordered the state to issue amended birth certificates accordingly.  The trial court refused to stay its decision pending appeal, so the certificates were issued.

The Arkansas Supreme Court reversed, even though the state conceded at oral argument that in light of its statute requiring that a husband be listed on a birth certificate regardless whether he was biologically related to the child the state’s position was inconsistent with its own practice. Indeed, the state conceded at oral argument that it had no rational basis for treating same-sex and different-sex spouses differently for this purpose.  However, the state insisted that it was refusing to list same-sex spouses consistent with its gender-specific statute because the birth certificate was necessary to establish the identity of biological parents for public health reasons.  This was a patently absurd argument in light of the various circumstances under Arkansas law where non-biological fathers are listed on birth certificates.

The dissenting judges pointed in various ways to the Obergefell decision, which actually listed birth certificates as one of the issues related to marital rights that helped explain why the right to marry was a fundamental right.  Furthermore, as the certiorari petition points out in detail, the very question raised by this case was specifically part of the Obergefell case, as the underlying state cases that were consolidated into the appeal argued at the 6th Circuit and the Supreme Court included plaintiffs who were married lesbian couples seeking to have appropriate birth certificates for their children.  In those cases, the certificates had been denied by states that refused to recognize the validity of the mothers’ out-of-state marriages.  Thus, the Supreme Court’s reference to birth certificates was part of the issue before the Court, not merely illustrative of the reasons why the Court deemed the right to marry fundamental, and in holding that states were required to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in other states, the Court was incidentally addressing the refusal of states in the cases before the Court to recognize petitioners’ marriages for purposes of recording the names of parents on birth certificates!

Thus, the Arkansas Supreme Court majority was clearly wrong in asserting that the Obergefell decision did not address this issue and pertained only to the question whether same-sex couples had a right to marry.  Given biological facts, lesbian couples having children through donor insemination are exactly similarly situated with different-sex couples having children through donor insemination, as in both cases the spouse of the birth mother is not the biological parent of the child.  By the logic of Obergefell, denial of such recognition and marital rights offends both due process and equal protection guarantees of the 14th Amendment.  And, as the Petition points out, such denial relegates same-sex marriages to a “second tier” treatment, which was condemned by the Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), when it ruled that the federal government was required to extend equal recognition to same-sex marriages validly contracted under state laws.  In both cases, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the inability of same-sex lesbian couples to conceive children without a sperm donor provided a rational basis to deny recognition to their marriages or treat them differently from the marriages of heterosexual couples.

NCLR attorneys on the Petition including Legal Director Shannon Minter and staff attorneys Christopher Stoll and Amy Whelan. Arkansas attorney Cheryl Maples is listed as local counsel.  Cooperating Attorneys from Ropes & Gray LLP (Washington and Boston offices) on the Petition include Molly Gachignard, Christopher Thomas Brown, Justin Florence, Joshua Goldstein and Daniel Swartz, with prominent R&G partner Douglas Hallward-Driemeier as Counsel of Record for the case.  Hallward-Driemeier successfully argued the marriage recognition issue before the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges.  GLAD attorney Mary Bonauto from Boston argued the right to marry issue in Obergefell.

States Take Differing Stances on Parental Status of Same-Sex Partners and Spouses

Posted on: May 22nd, 2015 by Art Leonard No Comments

Legal observers have been predicting that the Supreme Court will rule this June in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have a right to marry under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and to have such marriages recognized by every state, but such a ruling will not necessarily settle all the issues of parental rights of same-sex couples that continue to divide the courts.  Litigation in four jurisdictions demonstrates the continuing problem of sorting out such rights.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled on May 7 in Adoption of a Minor, 2015 Mass. LEXIS 248, 2015 WL 2095242, that the traditional presumption that a child born to a married woman is the legal child of her spouse applies to a lesbian couple, so they need not provide formal notice to their sperm donor that they are seeking a joint adoption in order to avoid problems if they travel or relocate outside Massachusetts.   But on May 20, the New York 2nd Department Appellate Division, in Brooklyn, ruled in Paczkowski v. Paczkowski, 2015 N.Y. Slip Op. 04325, 2015 WL 2386457, that the parental presumption does not apply to a lesbian couple, affirming a Nassau County family court ruling that the non-biological mother has no standing to seek a joint custody order for the child born to her same-sex partner.  In Oregon, the Court of Appeals ruled on May 13 in In re Domestic Partnership of Madrone, 2015 Ore. App. LEXIS 577, 2015 WL 2248221, that the question whether the former registered domestic partner of a birth mother should be considered the legal parent of the child turned on whether the women would have married had that option been available when the child was born, and in Wisconsin, Lambda Legal filed suit in Torres v. Rhoades, No. 15-cv-288 (U.S. Dist. Ct., W.D. Wis.), also on May 13, on behalf of a married lesbian couple denied the benefit of the marital presumption by state officials who have thus far refused to list both women as parents on their child’s birth certificate.

The cases each present somewhat different facts, but all of them implicate the question whether some form of the parental presumption should apply when children are born to a lesbian couple as a result of donor insemination.  The parental presumption, whether adopted as a judicial rule or through legislation, has differed in its strength from state to state, but has generally been applied by courts and government officials to ensure that a child born to a married woman not be deemed “illegitimate” and be entitled to the support of the biological mother’s spouse, and the presumption took on particular significance when married different-sex couples began to resort to donor insemination to deal with problems of male infertility, raising questions about the legal rights and responsibilities of the husbands.

In the Massachusetts case, petitioners J.S. and V.K., a married lesbian couple, filed a joint petition to adopt their son Nicholas who was born to J.S. in 2014, having been conceived through in vitro fertilization using a known sperm donor.  The women were married when Nicholas was born, and both are listed as parents on his birth certificate.  According to the opinion for the Supreme Judicial Court by Justice Fernande R.V. Duffly, the women “sought to adopt their son as a means of ensuring recognition of their parentage when they travel outside the Commonwealth or in the event of their relocation to a State where same-sex marriage is not recognized.”  They sought to proceed with the adoption without given notice to the sperm donor, contending that since he was not a legal parent of Nicholas, no notice was required.

 The family court judge denied their motion to dispense with the notice, certifying the question whether notice to a known biological father was required to the state appeals court.  The Supreme Judicial Court transferred the case directly to its docket, and concluded that such notice was not required.

Justice Duffly made clear that the parental presumption applied in this case.  “As to a child of a marriage who is conceived via artificial insemination or IVF, as here,” wrote Duffly, “[the statute] by its nature, contemplates that a third party must provide genetic material for the child’s conception.  Nonetheless, as is consistent with our paternity statutes and long-standing presumption of the legitimacy of marital children, [the statute] confers legal parentage only upon the mother’s consenting spouse, not the sperm donor.  It is thus presumed that marital children have only two lawful parents: the biological mother and her spouse.”  While acknowledging that there are contexts in which a sperm donor might assert claims to parentage, they did not apply in this case, where the sperm donor was not seeking any parental standing.  Thus, the court concluded, since the adoption statute “does not require the lawful parents of a child to give notice of the petition for adoption to a known sperm donor, we answer the reported question, ‘No.’  The order denying the petitioners’ motion to proceed with the adoption without further notice is reversed.”

 

The contrary ruling by the New York Appellate Division provides little rational explanation.  The case of Jann P. v. Jamie P. produced a startling ruling from Nassau County Family Court Judge Edmund M. Dane on June 30, 2014, holding that the state’s 2011 Marriage Equality Law, which provides that same-sex and different-sex marriages should be treated the same for all purposes of New York law, did not apply to the parental presumption.  The appellate division’s ruling abandoned the trial court’s decision to provide anonymity to the parties, identifying them as Jann and Jamie Paczkowski.  They were married when their son was born, but the marriage was a shaky one, and no adoption was undertaken.

When the couple separated and Jann sought a court order allowing her continued contact with her son, Judge Dane insisted that the parental presumption did not apply because it was physically impossible for Jann to have been the child’s biological parent.  On May 20, the Appellate Division echoed this conclusion.  “Here, the petitioner, who is neither an adoptive parent nor a biological parent of the subject child, failed to allege the existence of extraordinary circumstances that would establish her standing to seek custody,” wrote the court.  “Contrary to the petitioner’s contention,” the statutory provisions concerning the parental presumption “do not provide her with standing as a parent, since the presumption of legitimacy they create is one of a biological relationship, not of a legal status, and, as the nongestational spouse in a same-sex marriage, there is no possibility that she is the child’s biological parent.”

The court’s wording signals the archaic legal formalism of its approach to this issue.  Referring to “the subject child” as if this case did not involve flesh-and-blood people with emotional and psychological attachments – in this case, the bonding of a mother-child relationship extending over many months until Jann’s continued contact with her child was cut off – suggests that the judges were more concerned with  legal categories than human relationships, totally at odds with the underlying philosophy of family law, which is to strive to protect the best interest of children in disputes involving their parents.  The case cries out for reversal by the Court of Appeals or the legislature.

Surely, when the New York State legislature adopted a Marriage Equality Law that expressly provides that same-sex and different-sex marriages were to be treated as equal in all legal respects, it could not have implicitly intended to create an exception to the parental presumption statute.  And that statute is not written in gendered terms.  Section 417 of the Family Court Act states, “A child born of parents who at any time prior or subsequent to the birth of said child shall have entered into a ceremonial marriage shall be deemed the legitimate child of both parents for all purposes of this article regardless of the validity of the marriage.”  Clearly, the intent of the statute is to legitimize the birth of any child born to a married woman by recognizing both spouses as parents of the child.  The practice commentary published in the statute book states that this presumption “should apply to same sex as well as heterosexual married couples.”

The commentary cites a Monroe County decision from 2014, Wendy G.M. v. Erin G.M., 45 Misc. 3d 574, supporting this conclusion, in which the court ruled that a common law (non-statutory) policy could be applied to recognize the parental status of the biological mother’s wife.   Ironically, and inexplicably, the Appellate Division’s decision in the Paczkowski case cites the Wendy G.M. decision without acknowledging that it would support Jann’s standing to seek custody, making it seem as if the two decisions are consistent.  One wonders whether the judges whose names are attached to the Paczkowski ruling – Randall T. Eng, L. Priscilla Hall, Jeffrey A. Cohen, and Betsy Barros – bothered to read the Wendy G.M. decision.

The Oregon case is a bit more complicated.  Karah and Lorrena, same-sex partners, did not have a legally recognized relationship when Lorrena bore a child through donor insemination, although they entered into a registered domestic partnership after the child was born.  They had a commitment ceremony a few years before the child was conceived through donor insemination.  There was evidence, however, that Lorrena had expressed ideological opposition to marriage as an institution, and she testified that having the child was originally her idea and she never intended for Karah to be a legal parent of the child.  Despite their entering into a domestic partnership after the child was born, it seems that their relationship had deteriorated during Lorrena’s pregnancy, and the circumstances under which the domestic partnership papers were signed is disputed by the parties.  On the other hand, they had agreed to adopt a new surname, Madrone, and that name was used for the child’s birth certificate, both women being listed as parents.  After the subsequent break-up, Karah sought to establish her parental status, relying on a prior Oregon court decision recognizing parental standing for same-sex partners.  Today same-sex partners can marry in Oregon as a result of a court ruling last year, but that option was not available when the child was born.

The court of appeals determined that Karah’s parental standing should turn on whether the women would have married had that option been available to them at the time the child was born.  Thus, the court implicitly endorsed the view that if this same-sex couple had been married when the child was born, Karah’s parental status would have been the same as that of a husband who had consented to his wife becoming pregnant through donor insemination, applying the statutory parental presumption.

The Lambda Legal lawsuit in Wisconsin seeks to vindicate the same principle.  Marriage equality has been available in Wisconsin since the U.S. Supreme Court announced on October 6, 2014, that it would not review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit finding that Wisconsin’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.  This includes, of course, a requirement that Wisconsin recognize same-sex marriages contracted in other states.

Chelsea and Jessamy became friends in 2001, have lived as partners in a committed relationship since 2010, and were married in 2012 in New York.  They live in Dane County, Wisconsin, and initiated the process of having a child together in 2013, using the services of a fertility clinic for Chelsea to conceive through assisted reproductive technology.  Their child was born in March 2015 in Madison, and they filled out forms to obtain a birth certificate listing both of them as parents.  But when they received the “Notification of Birth Certificate Registration” from the state’s Department of Health Services, Chelsea was listed as the only parent.  Their lawyer corresponded with the Department, but the response was that DHS was “evaluating” the situation, and as of the filing of their complaint in the U.S. District Court on May 13, they had not received a correct birth certificate listing both of them as parents.

Their complaint points out that a Wisconsin statute embodies the parental presumption and applies it to situations where a wife becomes pregnant through assisted reproductive technology.  Although the statute uses gendered language (referring to the husband and the wife), courts in other states, such as California, have held that such statutes should be construed as gender neutral in the case of same-sex married couples to be consistent with constitutional equality requirements.  Their complaint alleges that failure to apply the parental presumption and issue the birth certificate violates the couple’s equal protection and due process rights under the 14th Amendment.

It may be that once the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a marriage equality ruling these parental presumption issues will eventually be sorted out in a consistent manner, but the differing approaches of state officials and courts suggests that this is one issue that will require further work to pin down the practical implications of marriage equality once the basic principle has been established.

 

New York Court Refuses to Apply Parental Presumption for Married Same-Sex Couple

Posted on: November 14th, 2014 by Art Leonard No Comments

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 biological parents were not married to each other.  Some states treat that presumption as incontestable, while others, including New York, say that the presumption can be defeated by evidence showing that a different man is the child’s biological father.  A New York court, faced with a paternity proceeding brought by a man who had an affair with a woman who was married to another woman, recently decided that the man had a right to attempt to prove that he is the biological father and seek a paternity order, rejecting the idea that the traditional presumption should play any role in this case.

The facts of Q.M. v. B.C. and J.S., P-13761-13, decided on October 21, 2014, and reported in the New York Law Journal on November 13, are unusual.  Ms. C. and Ms. S. became acquainted when Ms. S was just 16.  They began living together the following year, and were married in Dover, New Hampshire, on November 22, 2010.  Their marriage has not been smooth, however, including several separations, and a divorce proceeding is under way.  During one of their separations, during parts of 2011 and 2012, Ms. C began a relationship with Mr. Q.M..  Wrote Justice Joan Kohout (N.Y. Supreme Court, Monroe County), “Ms. C. admitted that she became pregnant with J.C. as a result of sexual relations with Mr. M. and that she was not sexually involved with any other man at the time she became pregnant.”  That is, Ms. C. admits that Mr. M. is the biological father of her child, who was not conceived through donor insemination.  Indeed, after the child was born, Ms. C allowed Mr. M. two visits, even though their intimate relationship had ended when she got back together with her wife.  However, shortly after these visits, Mr. M. filed this paternity action, and Ms. C. cut off his access to the child.  Mr. M. sought, among other things, genetic testing to confirm that J.C. is his daughter.

Ms. C. was pregnant when she got back together with Ms. S., who was at the hospital when the child was born, “selected the child’s name and signed her birth certificate.  Both Ms. C. and Ms. S. testified that Ms. S. has a close relationship with J.C.,” wrote the judge, “and that since their separation, Ms. C. has permitted Ms. S. to have contact with the child.”  The women have been separated since April 2014, and their divorce action was filed in July.  Nonetheless, Ms. S. desires to be treated as a mother of J.C., and her estranged spouse, B.C., supports her position on this.

“Ms. C. takes the position that Mr. M. should be excluded from J.C.’s life,” wrote the judge.  “Although she has never denied that he is J.C.’s biological father, she argues that her wife is the lawful and proper parent of J.C.  She testified that she wants her ‘wife to have rights to my daughter as she has been.’  Ms. C. acknowledges that Ms. S. never adopted J.C. and that the couple separated in April 2014.”

Ms. C. and Ms. S. want to take advantage of the parental presumption, arguing that there was no need for Ms. S. to adopt J.C. in order to be considered her parent, because the women were married when J.C. was born.  They relied on New York’s Marriage Equality Law, which provides that same-sex and different-sex marriages are to be treated the same for all purposes of law.    Alternatively, they relied on the legal doctrine of “equitable estoppel,” arguing that under these circumstances Q.M. should be barred from asserting parental rights.

Justice Kohout rejected both arguments.

“With the advent of same-sex marriage, the role of the non-biological spouse, especially in a marriage of two women, requires a re-examination of the traditional analysis of the presumption of legitimacy,” wrote the judge.  “Most of the cases to date concerning same-sex couples involve children born of artificial insemination where female spouses have planned together to raise the child.  Recently, in the well-crafted decision of Wendy G-M v. Erin G-M the supreme court held that in the context of a divorce of a same-sex couple, the non-biological wife was the legal parent of a child born of artificial insemination during the marriage.”  The judge pointed out that such cases usually involve an anonymous sperm donor and “there is no legal father,” so “the statute may easily be applied in a gender neutral manner.”

But in this case, she found, such application of the statutory presumption did not make sense because, as a matter of biology, “there is no dispute that Ms. S. is not, and could not possibly be, the second parent of this child.”  Responding to Ms. C.’s argument that the Marriage Equality Act requires the parental presumption rule to be applied in a gender neutral manner, the judge said that “the Marriage Equality Act does not require the court to ignore the obvious biological differences between husbands and wives.”  Referring to the state in question, she wrote that it could be “easily applied to same-sex female married couples, but not to same-sex male couples, neither of whom are able to bear a child.  In the same vein, neither spouse in a same-sex female couple can father a child.  Thus, while the language” of the Marriage Equality Law “requires same-sex married couples to be treated the same as all other married couples, it does not preclude differentiation based on essential biology.”

The judge also noted that New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, has “repeatedly declined to expand the traditional definition of a parent beyond biological or birth parents and adoptive parents,” and has “rejected arguments that non-adoptive or non-biological third parties, such as Ms. S., should be grated parental status based on a claim of a close relationship with the child.”  In Justice Kohout’s view, Ms. S. has, at best, the status of a step-parent.  While that might mean, under appropriate circumstances, she would be awarded visitation rights with J.C., she could not seek custody in preference to the child’s biological parents, Q.M. and B.C.  The fact that she was married to B.C. when the child was born “does not change her status.”

Justice Kohout found that the alternative legal theory of equitable estoppel provided no help to the mothers in this case.  Mr. M. has never denied being the biological father of J.C., sought out contact shortly after the child’s birth, and filed a paternity action promptly, seeking to establish his legal ties.  Equitable estoppel might be used, for example, to reject a paternity claim from a man who had agreed to donate sperm under the condition that he would not assert parental rights, but could not be used on these facts to prevent Mr. M. from asserting a paternity claim.

Justice Kohout wrote, “Since Ms. S. never adopted J.C. and is not a biological parent, she does not fit within New York’s definition of parent.  Thus, Ms. S. is not entitled to court ordered custody or visitation with J.C., and any contact she has with J.C. is entirely by voluntary arrangement with Ms. C.  Of course, there is nothing to prevent Ms. C. from continuing to permit Ms. S. to have a relationship with J.C., as suggested by the attorney for the child [appointed by the court], especially if she believes it to be consistent with her daughter’s best interest.”

The problem, however, is that Mr. M. will have the status of a legal parent who can seek court-ordered custody and visitation, as against Ms. S., who will have no such rights.  If Ms. C were to die or become incapacitated from taking care of J.C., Mr. M. would hold all the cards in a dispute with Ms. S. over custody and visitation.  The failure of New York law to allow for the possibility that a child can have more than two legal parents at the same time leaves a gap in the rights of de facto parents such as Ms. S.  Progressive legislation in California now recognizes the possibility of more than two parents in unusual cases.  New York might consider the desirability of legislative reform in light of the legal and social changes accompanying the Marriage Equality Act.  The facts of this case suggest that it would be desirable for Ms. S. to have more secure legal standing than “step-parent” in her relationship with J.C.

B.C. is represented by Yolanda Rios of the Legal Aid Society of Rochester, New York.  J.S. is represented by Marc A. Duclos, Assistant Conflict Defender, assigned because the Legal Aid Society could not represent both mothers simultaneously due to their differing legal interests.  The court appointed Beth A. Ratchford as attorney to represented the child’s interests.  James A. Napier represents Q.M.