Massachusetts parentage laws are long out of date and exclude many children, particularly those with LGBTQ parents and/or de facto parents. The Massachusetts Parentage Act (MPA) would change that, but faces a deadline next week that means we must act now in urging legislators to move it forward.
[Update, 4/19/2022: The deadline has been extended to 6/30/2022. Update, 7/1/2022: The deadline has been extended to 7/22/2022. Please still contact your legislators as below, urging them to support this legislation.]
The MPA (S.1133 / H.1714) has bipartisan support and had a hearing before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary last November, where it seemed to have been well received. The committee has until April 15th to move it out of committee with either a favorable or unfavorable report, however. An unfavorable report would effectively kill the bill—which means advocates are making a big push over the next few days urging them to report it favorably.
The Massachusetts Parentage Act Coalition, a group of LGBTQ, child welfare, health care, and legal organizations and involved individuals, wrote a letter to the committee (PDF) this week noting the many attacks on LGBTQ people across the country, and asserting, “It has never been more important for states to act to secure basic protections that allow LGBTQ people to simply live their lives as other community members do.” The letter stresses the importance of legal parentage to avoid “tragic consequences” for children, but notes that “our parentage laws are forty years out of date and exclude certain children and families, particularly those in the LGBTQ community.”
The coalition also highlights the need for recognition of de facto parents, saying, “De facto parentage is one of the paths to parentage, and it prioritizes children by protecting their relationship to a person who has functioned as their parent.” Massachusetts has recognized a de facto parent status since 1999, but this status currently allows only visitation, rather than the full “building blocks of stability and well-being” such as “decision making, child support, access to benefits and more.”
The MPA would change this and make de facto parents equal, legal parents. The bill also “reflects an extremely rigorous standard—higher than the current law” for determining de facto parentage, the coalition said. In fact, the requirements and proofs needed for de facto parentage status, and the explicit protections for survivors of domestic violence, make this status “the most protective and rigorous statute in New England.”
To understand why de facto parentage status is so important, consider the story of J. Shia and her son. As Shia testified in November:
When I was 19, my then girlfriend gave birth to our son, a child she and I had agreed to raise together. I was his primary parent for the first four years of his life until his birth mother ended our relationship and eventually broke off all contact between us. It was heartbreaking to me and to him. Soon after, I learned my son had been removed from his mother’s home and taken into DCF [Department of Children and Families] custody. I immediately reached out to DCF, but they did not view me as a parent. My son suffered while in foster care, and it took almost two years for me to regain custody through a permanent guardianship. My son is now a wonderful, happy 12-year-old, but I know that a guardianship can be revoked…. There was no law to protect my son when our relationship was threatened, and no other child should have to go through that.
Read more of Shia’s story here.
The MPA would also clarify other paths to parentage, including for unmarried parents and families formed through assisted reproduction; improve access to the protections of legal parentage (for example, by giving same-sex parents access to Voluntary Acknowledgments of Parentage that can be completed immediately after a birth and don’t require background checks or court visits); offer greater guidance to the courts so there is consistency across the state; and ensure equality for all children and thus the constitutionality of state statutes. It does not change any laws around custody, visitation, or child support.
I’ve written extensively about the MPA before, so I’ll refer you to a post from last July for a more detailed overview, and to my coverage of the bill’s hearing before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary last November.
If you live in Massachusetts, please take action today to help pass the MPA. The MPA Coalition is asking people to:
- Read the Coalition letter to the Judiciary Committee Chairs
- Contact members of the Judiciary Committee and ask them to advance the MA Parentage Act to protect LGBTQ+ families and all children and families in Massachusetts
- Follow the MA Parentage Act Coalition on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to share posts and help spread the word