A recent ruling by the New York Court of Appeals in Brooke B. v. Elizabeth C.C. that expanded custodial and visitation rights to non-traditional parents marked a “significant” advance for the state in recognizing changing familial structures, Fordham Law School Professor Clare Huntington said.
For a quarter century after the court’s ruling in Alison D. v. Virginia M., New York afforded only biological or adoptive parents legal protections, even as numerous other states, including ones generally considered to be more socially conservative than New York, expanded their parental definitions amid changing family norms and the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling. Whereas New York was the seventh state to provide equal marriage rights, it was “behind the curve” on equal parental rights, said Huntington, author of Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships.
“This ruling puts New York firmly in the mainstream of recognizing adults who act as parents but are not biological or adoptive parents,” Huntington noted.
In Brooke B. v. Elizabeth C.C., the petitioner gave the couple’s son her last name, stayed at home with him for his first year while her then-fiancée returned to work, and was referred to as “Mama B” by the boy, according to court documents. Elizabeth C.C., the child’s biological mother, initially allowed custodial visits after the couple’s relationship ended in 2010. By July 2013, however, she had terminated those visits, providing the impetus for the lawsuit.
While the court’s ruling said an adult without a biological or adoptive tie to a child could be granted custodial and visitation rights, the court did not provide a standard for determining which adults would be able to make such a claim. The next issue for the New York courts, Huntington said, will be determining this standard.
Prior to last week’s ruling, non-biological parents needed to file for adoption, via a costly and time-intensive process, to protect their parental rights. This ruling did not obviate the need to do so, Huntington said.
“The prudent and careful thing to do is still to file for second-parent adoption,” the professor explained. “That makes it crystal clear that the non-biological mother has rights to the child.”