New Non-Bio Mom Rights in Washington; Necessary but Not Sufficient
The Washingon State Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a non-bio mom who raised a child with her partner from birth to age 6 can seek rights as a “de facto parent,” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.
This is certainly better than a ruling to the contrary, but doesn’t go as far as California’s August ruling that lesbian partners who have children while they are a couple are both entitled, and required, to be treated as the children’s parents. Nor does it come close to a New Jersey ruling that allowed a lesbian couple to put both the bio and non-bio moms’ names on their child’s birth certificate, without needing an adoption, thus securing both their rights from the moment of birth.
Of course, on the day when an Oregon judge upheld that state’s same-sex marriage ban, this begs the question of why a lesbian couple shouldn’t be able to legalize their own relationship and thus provide two parents under the law in the same way as a heterosexual couple.
In the meantime, however, make sure you cover yourselves as legally necessary. If you’re in a long-term relationship with kids, talk with a lawyer. That’s Friday’s public-service announcement. Have a good weekend.
Filed under: Parenting, Politics and Law
[...] The Seattle Times has a good editorial reinforcing what I said in my previous post about the recent Washington state ruling giving a non-bio mom the right to seek parental rights. The key point: This dispute could have been avoided if the Washington Legislature had given the two women the ability to get married. The argument over same-sex marriage has been too much focused on social acceptance of homosexuals. That is part of it, but the more urgent part is in defining the rights and responsibilities of adults who already are rearing children. [...]
[...] Interestingly, when we petitioned the state of New Jersey to put us both on our son’s birth certificate without an adoption (which they did), they would only do so if we were both listed as “parent,” not “mother,” since this would open a can of worms in other cases. For example, in the case of a straight couple using a surrogate, the surrogate and the mom wishing to raise the child could then both claim they were her/his mother. In the well known New Jersey case of Baby M, the state maintained that the surrogate, if she wanted to keep the child, would be its only legal mother. The state therefore feels it has a valid reason to claim that there can’t be two legal “mothers,” though there can be two legal “parents.” I can understand that, although I’d like to think the state can distinguish cases of two lesbians who want to raise a child together from those of two women competing over a child. (For that matter, let same-sex couples marry and solve the whole problem.) [...]