British article on co-parenting by friends (or by people who meet on websites designed to match co-parents) ignores legal issues

The British newspaper, The Telegraph, recently ran a story about people not in intimate relationships choosing to parent together. The lead family started as a single lesbian and a gay man chatting on an online fertility forum and is now a lesbian couple and a gay man. The coparents are not all gay. The article links to three different websites where people looking for such a co-parenting

New California statute protects nonbiological parents

Last Friday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed the Protection of Parent-Child Relationships Act. This groundbreaking statute will solve a problem I wrote about last year in this post. Because federal law allows the mother and biological father of a child to sign a Voluntary Acknowledgement of Paternity (VAP) that makes the man a legal parent, the following scenario is possible: Lesbian

NY Times highlights family trees complicated by assisted reproduction

It's shaping up to be a banner week for the New York Times attention to LGBT families. Yesterday's paper edition included a front page article, "Who's on the Family Tree? Now It's Complicated."Jennifer Williams, a lesbian, gives birth to a child, Mallory, using donor sperm, so that her sister and brother-in-law, who could not conceive, can adopt the child. Williams has a partner and also has

Nonbio mom, Sondra Shineovich, successful on remand from Oregon Court of Appeals

In 2009, I wrote extensively about the Oregon Court of Appeals ruling in Shineovich v. Kemp. The court held that the consent of a biological mother's same-sex partner to her insemination, with the intent to parent the resulting child, made the nonbio mom a legal parent. The court reviewed the state's statute making a husband the parent of a child born to his wife using donor insemination to

Gay semen donor obtains parentage order ... then tries to get out of paying child support

It's a common story. Lesbian couple asks gay friend to be a semen donor. They agree he will not be a parent, won't have his name on the birth certificate, but will be in the child's life -- somewhat. In Curtis v. Prince, a case decided by an Ohio appeals court last week, this scenario went bad...twice. Laura Prince, her partner Vicki Griffin, and their friend, Robert Curtis, signed an

Gary and Tony...and the child who has two mothers

The focus of discussion of the CNN documentary, "Gary and Tony Have a Baby," has understandably been the birth of their child using the egg of one woman and the services of another as a gestational surrogate. But I want to comment on their other child, the one born to a lesbian couple using Tony's semen.What was remarkable to me about that child was that Tony (and Gary) so clearly understood that

US Supreme Court lets stand California court ruling on nonbio mom's parentage

Last June I posted on a spectacular ruling by the California Court of Appeal in the case of Charisma R. v. Kristina S. The court ruled that the nonbio mom, Charisma, was a parent, based on the couple's joint planning for the child and the fact that the couple brought the child into their home together and held the child out as the child of both of them. It therefore treated the dispute between

When a semen donor teams up with a bio mom...

I write often about the cases in which a legally recognized mom (through birth or adoption) seeks to deprive her children of their other mom, her former partner. Arguments against the second mother invariably invoke a narrow definition of "parent" and sometimes, as in the highly-publicized Miller-Jenkins case, are downright homophobic.But the cases take a sinister turn when the semen donor teams

Oregon Supreme Court lets stand ruling that child of lesbian couple has two mothers from birth

Last July I wrote extensively about an Oregon appeals court decision declaring that a woman who consents to her partner's insemination is also a parent of the resulting child. The court reached its conclusion by reasoning that the law makes that provision for the husband of a woman who conceives through donor insemination and so it is unconstitutional (under the state constitution) to exclude a

Lesbian couples as joint legal parents in Europe

I'm still excited about our new law in DC that makes both lesbian partners the parents of the child that one of them gives birth to if her partner consented to the insemination with the intent to parent or if the couple is married or registered domestic partners. If you missed the details, check this post.I've gotten an update from Dutch law professor Kees Waaldijk on the status of lesbian

Landmark D.C. law grants parental status to two mothers

In the first law of its kind in the country, the District of Columbia confers the status of legal parent on both lesbian mothers who plan a child using donor insemination. The law states that a person who consents to a woman's insemination with the intent to be a parent of the resulting child is a parent of the child. Consent must be in writing. If there is no written consent, it is still

An amazing lesbian parentage case from Oregon -- and two caveats

Please pardon this long post. The case, Shineovich v. Kemp, is important enough to merit it. (And I'm a parentage law geek....Just skim the parts that seem too geeky....Or leave me a question in a comment).When the District of Columbia parentage law I've worked on for two years takes effect next week, lesbian couples having children here will have the greatest protection available anywhere for

Don't believe the noise; Michael Jackson was the father of his children

The news reports this morning about the circumstances of the conception of Michael Jackson's children are suggesting that the information might impact who gets custody of the children. But that just shows ignorance about the difference between legal parenthood and biology. They do not always go together and there is nothing new about that.So let's start with what's simple. Debbie Rowe gave birth

Good news for non-bio moms in California

After my post this week about a dreadful Missouri case, I am especially pleased to report on a terrific case from a California appeals court, although it comes after a biological mom deprived her daughter of her second mom for most of the first five years of her life.The story of Kristina, the bio mom, and Charisma, the non-bio mom, is pretty typical: joint participation in selecting an anonymous

Missouri court deprives one child of a second mom and the other of child support

The number of states that disregard a child's second mother grows. I don't know whether to scream or cry. I do know that if judges cannot see the family in front of their eyes then the answer lies in changing state statutes to recognize two parents of a child born through donor insemination.Here is the latest disaster, which adds Missouri to the hall of shame. Leslea and Michelle White (

Uniform Probate Code recognizes child of assisted reproduction by lesbian couples as child of both moms

Legal parentage matters for lots of reasons. One of those reasons is that it determines whether a parent-child relationship exists for the purpose of inheriting in the absence of a will. So when a lesbian couple has a child together using donor insemination, the legal status of the biological mom's partner determines whether the child will inherit from her if she dies without a will that names

No one should have to adopt her own child....

A New York court opinion reported last week highlights the legal maze facing lesbian couples raising children. Mona and Ingrid were the couple in the case. Ingrid gave birth to their child after implantation in her uterus of an egg fertilized using Mona's egg. Mona filed a petition to adopt their son, Sebastian.The judge in the case first presented the reasons that Mona was already Sebastian's