Massachusetts, which led the nation in marriage equality, has fallen behind in updating its parentage laws to protect the children of LGBTQ parents and others regardless of the circumstances of their birth. A bill has just been reintroduced to change that. Here’s how you can help it succeed.
Current Massachusetts law does not treat children equally if they are born via assisted reproduction, surrogacy, or to same-sex parents who aren’t married. Some must wait six months or longer to establish a legal parent-child relationship, explains the Massachusetts Parentage Act Coalition, which is spearheading the push for change. Additionally, de facto parents, those who have functioned as full parents with the consent of the legal parent, are not treated as equal parents under the law. And overall, there are standards in need of clarification and precedents in need of codification so that courts can have greater consistency and efficiency in establishing parentage claims. Massachusetts is now the only New England state that has not comprehensively reformed its parentage laws to account for the diversity of family forms today.
An Act to Ensure Legal Parentage Equality (HD.1713/SD.497), also known as the Massachusetts Parentage Act (MPA), was filed at the end of January by lead House sponsors Rep. Sarah Peake and Rep. Hannah Kane and lead Senate sponsors Senator Julian Cyr and Senator Bruce Tarr. The bill clearly asserts who can be a parent and the many ways to establish parentage; clarifies that a de facto parent has equal rights and responsibilities to any other type of parent; removes gendered language from parentage statutes; and adds protections for children born through assisted reproduction, including surrogacy. It also expands access to Voluntary Acknowledgments of Parentage (VAPs), simple, free forms that can be completed at the hospital immediately after a birth to establish legal parentage. (For further details, see my piece from July 2021.)Â
The MPA is based on the 2017 Uniform Parentage Act (UPA), model parentage legislation developed by the Uniform Law Commission, a non-partisan body of state lawmakers, judges, scholars, and lawyers. The UPA was first developed in 1973, then updated in 2002 to expand ways of determining legal parentage for children born through assisted reproduction, and in 2017 to ensure that state parentage laws remain constitutional by providing equality and paths to parentage for LGBTQ families, among other changes. Several states have already adopted provisions of the 2017 UPA, including Connecticut, which enacted a comprehensive update to its parentage laws in 2021, and Maine, which in 2021 extended VAPs to LGBTQ parents.
A version of the MPA introduced in Massachusetts last session had bipartisan support and gained a hearing before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary in November 2021, where legal and child welfare experts, LGBTQ advocates, children of LGBTQ parents, and LGBTQ parents testified to the need for updating parentage law. It was, however, unable to move to the next stage of the legislative process during a busy legislative session.
The MPA Coalition, led by LGBTQ legal advocacy group GLAD and fertility education and advocacy group Resolve New England, now includes more than 40 legal, health care, social service, and LGBTQ organizations. Those endorsing the bill last session also included the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office under now-Governor Maura Healey, the City of Boston, the Boston Globe Editorial Board, and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.
In an e-mail to supporters on February 1, the coalition said it is “more determined than ever” to pass the bill. The coalition is now asking Massachusetts residents to:
- Complete the form on their website and personalize it to send a letter to your Massachusetts state rep or state senator, asking them to co-sponsor the MPA.
- Call your state rep or senator and use the sample language from the form as a script when you leave a message. Get their contact information here.
- Let the MPA Coalition know if you get any feedback from legislative offices.
If you don’t live in Massachusetts, please reach out to family and friends who do. As a Massachusetts resident myself, this bill is very important to me. My own family’s legal ties are secure, but those of so many other families are not.
