MASSACHUSETTS: State Supreme Court Grants Parental Rights To Former Partner Of Lesbian Mom

The case is important because the couple had never married. The Associated Press reports:

The Massachusetts court that paved the way for same-sex marriage in the United States ruled Tuesday that an unmarried gay woman whose former girlfriend gave birth to two children through artificial insemination has the same parental rights as their biological mother. The Supreme Judicial Court, of Massachusetts, issued its decision Tuesday in a complicated case about the parental rights of a once-partnered, but unmarried, gay couple.

Julie Gallagher gave birth to the children, and her former partner, Karen Partanen, has helped raise them. They are now 4 and 8. After the couple split in 2013, Partanen wanted to be declared a full legal parent. A family court judge dismissed Partanen’s request, finding that she didn’t meet the requirements under state law because she and Gallagher were not married when the children were born, and Partanen is not a biological parent.

In overturning that ruling, the SJC found that a gay person may establish themselves as a child’s presumptive parent under state law, even without a biological relationship with the child. “The plain language of the provisions, then, may be construed to apply to children born to same-sex couples, even though at least one member of the couple may well lack biological ties to the children,” Justice Barbara Lenk wrote for the court in the unanimous decision.

More than 35 states confer parentage on spouses who consent to assisted reproductive technology, as Partanen did. Seven of those states and the District of Columbia give legal parentage to the person who consents to the procedure with the intent to parent the resulting child, without regard to marital status, according to fertility associations and attorneys who submitted written arguments supporting Partanen.