New York’s highest court has ruled that a woman who was once in a lesbian relationship has a right to see the couple’s child, even though she doesn’t have a biological or adoptive connection to the child.
You can read the entire ruling here.
The Court of Appeals says New York’s 25-year-old standard of parental rights has become outdated, and the woman who agreed to have her former partner conceive a child through artificial insemination and to raise the child together has parental rights. The ruling says a partner who shows by “clear and convincing evidence” that they were raising the child with the biological parent should have the right to seek visitation or custody.
The case involved two women who declared a symbolic union before Gay Marriage was legal in New York. One partner had the child and all three lived together until the couple broke up in 2010. Relations soured, and the biological mother tried to prevent her ex from seeing the child, setting off the case which took three years to work its way through to the highest court.