Relational Parents

2019 ◽  
pp. 476-502
Author(s):  
Robin Fretwell Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Parental Status ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
The Law ◽  
Family Privacy

Significant changes in family forms and dynamics (such as increases in nonmarital cohabitation, children cared for by extended family, and same-sex couples with children) have prompted policymakers to rethink the question of who is a legal parent. Specifically, the law is grappling with which adults will be granted parental status or rights based on their relationship with a child’s parent and why. This chapter reviews the mounting number of doctrinal hooks used by courts, legislatures, and law reformers for deciding when adults can make claims in children. It examines traditional parentage and family privacy doctrines, reviews justifications for a dramatic widening of the parental tent, and then turns to a set of fairness and child-welfare concerns raised by these concepts, highlighting four major worries. It argues that costs of considering the parentage claims of relational parents—both to the legal parent and to the child—have received inadequate weight to date.

Structural and moral commitment among same-sex couples: Relationship duration, religiosity, and parental status.

2008 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramona Faith Oswald ◽  
Abbie Goldberg ◽  
Kate Kuvalanka ◽  
Eric Clausell
Keyword(s):  
Parental Status ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Moral Commitment ◽  
Relationship Duration ◽  
Same Sex Couples

After Obergefell: On Marriage and Belonging in Carson McCullers’s Member of the Wedding

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Sarah Song
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Court Ruling ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Supreme Court Ruling ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Civil Unions ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
The Law

The 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges was a historic day for gay rights as well as for the institution of marriage. The Court's decision led many of the states that introduced marriage equality prior to Obergefell to eliminate civil unions on the grounds that same-sex couples could now get married. A reading of Carson McCullers's novel The Member of the Wedding in the context of Obergefell reveals the shadow marriage casts over nonmarital affinities and relationships. McCuller's protagonist, Frankie, desires not to join the wedding as a member but to disrupt it. Through Frankie's wedding fantasies, McCullers illuminates forms of belonging that are ostensibly outside the law and that move across temporal and spatial boundaries, unseating marriage as the measure of all relationships.

scholarly journals Jacob v Shultz-Jacob, 923 A 2d 473, 2007 Pa Super Lexis 957 (Pa Super 2007)

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-210
Author(s):  
Robert E Rains
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
Parental Rights ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Supreme Court Justice ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Normal Number ◽  
The Law

THREE PARENTS?United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once famously opined that, “. . . law, like nature itself, makes no provision for dual fatherhood.”  Of course, we know that many children today are being raised in households where their primary paternal figure is a stepfather, and their natural father, who is their legal father, may or may not exercise some quantum of visitation/access.2  Moreover, many American jurisdictions today allow same-sex couples to adopt, so that a child has either two mothers or two fathers.3  But the situation which Justice Scalia was addressing involved a child whose mother was married at the time of conception, who apparently was the product of her mother’s affair with another man, and where the mother’s husband had forgiven all and accepted the child as his own.4  Justice Scalia could not imagine that the law, or nature, would permit a child to have three parents, in that case a mother and two fathers.  Indeed, in the typical same-sex adoption case, either there is no known father because one of the lesbian partners was inseminated by an anonymous donor,5 or a known donor has agreed to terminate his parental rights.6  In either of those scenarios, a child ends up with the normal number of parents:  two.

2. Formation of Marriage and Civil Partnership

2015 ◽  
pp. 30-61
Author(s):  
N V Lowe ◽  
G Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Civil Partnership ◽  
The Law

This chapter examines how the law on entry into marriage has developed and what are the current requirements for a valid marriage. It then considers the equivalent rules enacted for couples (at present only same sex couples) entering into a ‘civil partnership’.

We are Family (Sometimes): Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Relationships after Fitzpatrick

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-282
Author(s):  
Kenneth McK Norrie
Keyword(s):  
Housing Association ◽  
Family Relationship ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Legal Recognition ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law

Fitzpatrick v Sterling Housing Association is offundamental importance as thefirst time that the House of Lords has held that a same-sex couple can he a “family” for certain legal purposes. It consigns the concept of a “pretended family relationship” to the dustbin of history and is one of a line of important decisions from supreme courts around the world which, in different ways, are developing the law in the same direction. This article analyses Fitzpatrick and explores how it relates to international developments in discrimination law. It also identifies Scottish statutes which may now be accessible by same-sex couples in this jurisdiction and explores how similar foreign statutes are already accessible by such couples.

scholarly journals The influence of judicial practice on the legislation in the sphere of LGBT community rights

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 690-713
Author(s):  
Ana Čović
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Lgbt Community ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right

In the light of the announced adoption of the Law on Same-Sex Unions, the question arises whether the draft law is in accordance with the Constitution, especially after the announcements that the law will not be signed. Although the Constitution specifies that marriage is a union of a man and a woman, experts point out that in this case it is not a law on marriage and family, nor does it provide for the possibility of adoption of children by same-sex couples, but that it regulates property, health, pension and other legal relationships of same-sex partners living in the union. At the same time, many public figures have invited traditional religious communities to react in order to defend the "right to freedom and future of the people", emphasizing that contentious issues related to the regulation of mutual rights and obligations of same-sex couples could be resolved by amending the existing laws in those areas. In the countries where similar laws exist, case law has played a significant role, just as various medical and psychological associations. The European case law is not uniform, and cases often end before the European Court of Human Rights, while in the United States at the federal level, all anti-homosexual laws are repealed by a Supreme Court decision (Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 [2003]). Nevertheless, there is no single law in this area and the rights of same-sex couples vary from country to country. The paper will provide an overview of significant court decisions in this area in European countries, as well as the decisions of the US Supreme Court, which may lead us to think about the possible legal consequences of (non)adoption of the disputed Law on Same-Sex Unions, about procedures that could be initiated if partners decided to request judicial protection for the purpose of recognizing their guaranteed human rights, as well as the content and significance of such court judgments.

scholarly journals THE BRAVE NEW TERRITORY OF GAY PARENTING

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-196
Author(s):  
Mary Welstead
Keyword(s):  
Role Model ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Law School ◽  
Heterosexual Relationships ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Biological Father ◽  
Sperm Donor ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Appeal Court

Many couples in same-sex relationships are as enthusiastic in their desire to become parents as those who are in heterosexual relationships. Adoption, surrogacy, sperm donation, have all enabled same-sex couples to achieve their parental ambitions and create families. For the most part, they have done so without any interference by, or involvement with, the biological parents after the birth of their children.Whilst the majority of lesbian parents tend to use sperm which has been obtained from an anonymous donor, some women have shown a preference to use a sperm donor who is known to them to become the biological father of their children.This may be because they want to know the background, personality and medical history of a potential father before embarking on the procreative process. In some cases, it may also be because some women want their children to have a male role model in their life. Using a known sperm donor can, however, involve risks for would-be-mothers if, contrary to the father’s wishes, they do not want him to play a significant role in the child’s life. Their dreams of creating an autonomous nuclear family may be destroyed and replaced with a new form of extended family, consisting of three or even four parents if the biological father has a partner. The tale recounted in the Appeal Court judgment in A v B and C (Lesbian co-parents: role of father) (2012) is a cautionary one for lesbian would-be-parents and one of hope for potential biological fathers who are known to them. The Court of Appeal emphasised the paramountcy of the welfare principle, contained in s1(1) of the Children Act 1989 in resolving all child contact disputes. It declined to elicit any further principles in these difficult fact specific cases and stated that the sexual orientation of the parents and their pre-conceptual agreements, or understandings, spoken or unspoken are either irrelevant (per Thorpe LJ) or relevant but not determinative (per Black LJ).* Dr Mary Welstead, CAP Fellow, Harvard Law School, Visiting Professor of Family Law, University of Buckingham.[1] Re G; Re Z (Children: Sperm Donors: Leave to Apply for Children Act Orders) [2013] 1 FLR 1334.

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