Court of Appeals Opens Door for Non-Biological Partner to Seek Custody of Child

Pardalis & Nohavicka Equal Rights Law Update: Court of Appeals Opens Door for Non-Biological Partner to Seek Custody/Visitation of Child

In New York,  a venue of increasingly varied familial relationships, the rule that in an unmarried couple, a partner without a biological or adoptive relation to a child is not that child's "parent" for purposes of standing to seek custody or visitation notwithstanding their established relationship with the child, has been overruled.

The New York Court of Appeals has just ruled that if a partner shows by clear and convincing evidence that the parties agreed to conceive a child and to raise the child together, the non-biological, non-adoptive partner has standing to seek visitation and custody.

Here is the decision: Matter of Brooke S.B. v Elizabeth A.C.C.

Read it here: http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2016/2016_05903.htm