New York’s highest court ruled this week in a custody case that gave a non-biological mom the right to seek custody and visitation of the child she and her former partner had created and raised together. Great, right? Yes, for that one mom. But the court said the non-biological mother only had that right because […]
Too good to wait for the next roundup: The Pennsylvania state Superior Court overturned a 25-year-old precedent that said in custody cases involving former opposite-sex couples, where one person is now in a same-sex relationship, the burden is placed on the LGB parent to prove that the same-sex relationship will have no adverse effect on
You’ve heard the story before (and before that). A lesbian couple splits up. The biological mother tries to deny custody to the non-biological mother. They go to court. (In the case of Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller, they did so for years, with disastrous results when the bio mom flouted court orders and went into
The long-running custody dispute between Janet Jenkins and her former partner Lisa Miller made headlines again this week. I’ve written an article about it for Keen News Service, trying not only to cover this week’s actions but also to put it in the context of related cases. Keen News Service is a news organization run
Politics and Law A must-read this week is Jacob M. Appel’s piece on the growing “sperm donors’ rights movement,” in which donors are trying to assert their claims to parenthood. New Mexico’s new parentage laws go into effect on January 1, Nancy Polikoff reminds us. The Really Quite Wonderful new law states: “a person who…consents
Too good to wait for the next roundup: In an unexpected move, a Texas court issued a new ruling earlier this month in the case of a nonbiological lesbian mom suing her ex-partner for visitation rights to their child. Nancy Polikoff informs us that this new ruling reverses that of a lower court, which had
In what the Vermont Rutland Herald is calling “a first-of-its kind parent custody change,” Judge William Cohen of the Rutland Family Court yesterday granted sole custody of 7-year-old Isabella Miller to her non-biological mother, Janet Jenkins. Jenkins has been fighting her former partner Lisa Miller for visitation for years now. Miller says she is no
Too good to wait for the weekly roundup: The Montana Supreme Court affirmed a trial court decision granting a “parental interest” to Michelle Kulstad, a lesbian mom who had been co-parenting two children legally adopted only by her ex-partner, Barbara Maniaci. Under state law, the women could not jointly adopt. Maniaci is now married to
Diane Silver’s piece “Children suffer when the religious right wins,” in the Gay and Lesbian Times is worth a read. She writes of the relief she felt when her son Tony turned 18, relief in knowing no one could take him away from her. She is Tony’s non-biological mom, and almost lost him to her
The Department of Justice today filed its reply brief in Smelt v. United States, one of the legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act. Things look cautiously promising: With respect to the merits, this Administration does not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal. Consistent
