I have been lax in blogging but will try harder to find little nuggets of interest to you. Here goes the first of the new year.
Basic facts: Same-sex marriage, women. They decide to have a child and W1 does so via artificial insemination. Let’s assume that W2 is listed on the birth certificate. But as in the case with hetero couples sometimes, things go awry and divorce ensues. No problem as far as the parent-child relationship goes since both are on the birth certificate, right?. Not so fast, Buckwheat!
The Parent Trap
Read Jordan Ezell’s excellent piece in his blog of this title. The short summary:
- There are three paths to establish a mother-child relationship, and being on the birth certificate is not mentioned.
- Without that being a recognized method, W2 is not a parent.
- Adoption is the only solution.
The Texas Family Code determines who is and who is not a parent using laws that are based on the gender of the parent. Or, more simply put, the Code determines who is a mother and who is a father using a different set of rules for each.[ii] And while you can almost trip and fall into fatherhood, the same cannot be said for motherhood. The Code lays out three specific paths for establishing a mother-child relationship: (1) the woman giving birth to the child; (2) an adjudication of the woman’s maternity;[iii] or (3) the woman adopting the child.[iv] Notice that the law is void of any reference to the child’s birth certificate, which means that even if the non-biological (“non-bio”) mom’s name is on the child’s birth certificate, she still has not established a mother-child relationship and she does not have any legal parental rights. So when two women are in a same-sex relationship and they decide that one of them will give birth to their child, where does this leave the non-bio mom with regards to her parental rights? As it stands now, she must adopt.
Ezell, J. (2020, October 16). The parent trap. www.dallasgaylawers. https://www.dallasgaylawyers.com/post/the-parent-trap?fbclid=IwAR3KPuByhLygTL33nWfWwkBdhBdBTz6YLYo53vv8pNLd_XsROUw2Xyhqa1M
