In Re Madelyn B.
Jul 14, 2014OUTCOME: Good
Regardless of the status of a person’s legal rights, it is critical to remember that children form strong attachments to their parental caregivers regardless of legal labels. Separating a child from a ... person who has acted as their parent can be a devastating loss for a child. Moreover, court proceedings to establish de facto parenthood will beIn an important win for LGBT families, on July 2, 2014, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled In re Guardianship of Madelyn B. that Susan B. is an equal legal parent to the daughter she brought into the world with her now ex-partner, Melissa D., even though Susan and Melissa had no legal relationship to each other. Susan sought to establish her legal role as Madelyn’s parent after Melissa, Madelyn’s birth mother, cut off contact between them. Susan and Melissa decided to bring a child into the world and then raised Madelyn together from her birth in 2002, including establishing a guardianship for Susan, the only legal option available to them at the time. The couple continued to co-parent for over five years after they split up until Madelyn was eleven years old. Melissa began a relationship with a man she eventually married and she went to court in April 2013 both to end Susan’s guardianship and to obtain a stepparent adoption for her husband. A New Hampshire family court terminated Susan’s guardianship and prevented her from intervening in the stepparent adoption proceedings. Susan appealed these decisions to the New Hampshire Supreme Court and sought to have Susan declared a legal parent. The New Hampshire Supreme Court reversed the family court rulings and recognized that Madelyn has two parents, regardless of what their gender, sexual orientation or marital status is, citing New Hampshire’s “holding out” statute which states that someone is a parent if: “While the child is under the age of majority, he receives the child into his home and openly holds out the child as his child.” (The NH Supreme Court made it clear that this statute is to be read in a gender neutral way).
