What to Know
- The state found the existing standard "has become unworkable when applied to increasingly varied familial relationships"
- The ruling addressed two cases in which couples separated and visitation rights for the partner who did not give birth later came in doubt
- It also raised new questions about how to prove the threshold for becoming a "parent" has been achieved
What is a parent? The answer may seem obvious, but in New York the definition changed on Tuesday in a nod to the modern family.
The state's highest court overturned a 25-year-old precedent, finding the existing standard "has become unworkable when applied to increasingly varied familial relationships."
Under that 1991 ruling, known as Alison D., in an unmarried couple the person with no biological or adoptive relationship to a child was not that child's "parent" for purposes of seeking custody or visitation.
But from now on, the New York State Court of Appeals held, "where a partner shows by clear and convincing evidence that the parties agreed to conceive a child and to raise the child together, the non-biological, non-adoptive partner has standing to seek visitation and custody under Domestic Relations Law § 70."
The ruling addressed two cases in which lesbian couples separated and visitation rights for the partner who did not give birth later came into doubt.
It also raised new questions about how to prove the threshold for becoming a "parent" has been achieved. The court only partly answered that question in its decision, acknowledging that other questions would have to be addressed later.
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"We simply conclude that, where a petitioner proves by clear and convincing evidence that he or she has agreed with the biological parent of the child to conceive and raise the child as co-parents, the petitioner has presented sufficient evidence to achieve standing to seek custody and visitation of the child," the court wrote.
