In yet another “lesbians behaving badly” case, in which one lesbian mom tries to deny parental rights to a former partner after both have been raising a child together, a Florida court has said both moms are the legal parents of the child. Yes, Florida—which until just over a year ago was perhaps the most unfriendly state for lesbian and gay parents, banning all gay men and lesbians from adopting.
The case has special significance to me, because the moms created their family the same way my spouse and I did, with one providing the egg that the other carried. Lawyer Nancy Polikoff explains on her blog:
The birth mother, DMT, argued that her partner had been merely an egg donor and that she therefore was not a legal parent. (This in spite of the fact that the child had a last name that was the hyphenated last names of the two women, they sent out an announcement of the birth of “our beautiful daughter,” and they told the doctor who handled the assisted reproduction that they intended to raise the child as a couple.)
Polikoff has more on the legal nitty-gritty of the case—the bottom line, it seems, is that intent and actions matter. The genetic mom always intended to be the mother to the child her partner carried, and the women conducted themselves as equal parents after the child was born. It’s gratifying to see the court recognize this.
For more on “lesbians behaving badly” in custody cases—sadly, there are many such instances—see this post by GLAD’s Laura Kiritsy.