The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a ruling this week that outlines a new classification of parent: the ‘de facto’ parent. This classification affects anyone who acts in the role of a parent without a blood connection to the child.
The case the Supreme Court let stand was that of a lesbian couple who shared a child and eventually split. The child was carried via artificial insemination by one woman but shared no blood connection to the other. However, both women acted as parents for the full seven years of this child’s life. Did one parent have more rights over the child than the other simply because of shared genes? The court said no. Both parents share parental rights and therefore have equal right to pursue shared parental rights upon their split. Although one parent was biologically linked to the child, the other acted as a ‘de facto’ parent for the entirety of the child’s life.
A ‘de facto’ parent is a person who acts in a parental capacity for a child despite the presence of a biological or adoptive link to the child. Same gender parents may be one example of de facto parents. Stepparents are another.
De facto parental status has been awarded in many states over the last 20 years but this is the first time that a case has been taken in front of the US Supreme Court. The ruling to let the de facto status, originally determined in this case by Washington State, stand opens the doors to rights and responsibilities for not only same gender parents but also stepparents across the country.
As it stands, very few states allow stepparents any rights. When rights are awarded or acknowledged by a given state, they are usually limited in scope. Many states are not clear at all on what rights a stepparent holds. Some states do not allow a stepparent to sign a child’s school forms, take the child for medical care. Some states allow for these things and even allow stepparents to sue for custody or visitation rights of their stepchildren should the marriage end.
With stepfamilies growing so quickly in numbers, it is only a matter of time before stepparents rights are decided by the courts. The US Supreme Court, by letting the Washington Court’s decision to acknowledge de facto parenting rights stand, may have finally opened the flood gates for stepparenting rights across the nation.