Opinion ID: 6355971
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Reconciling Our Past Decisions

Text: ¶ 27. The framework described above harmonizes all of our past decisions without implicitly overruling or rewriting them, and is consistent with the spirit of our past decisions. The central fear that animated Moreau is of a broad de facto parent doctrine ... that essentially would allow any former domestic partner to compel a biological parent to defend against the unrelated ex-partner's claim that he or she is a 'parent' entitled to judicially enforced parental rights and responsibilities. 2014 VT 31 , ¶ 21, 196 Vt. 183 , 95 A.3d 416 . The Court in Moreau conceived of Mr. Moreau as an on-again-off-again boyfriend who did not jointly plan with the children's mother to form a family but, rather, came along and helped parent the children for a period of time. Id. ¶ 1. In the context of that vision of the record, the Moreau Court was resistant to a legal regime that would allow a mother to unwittingly afford her boyfriend the rights that flow from a legally recognized parental status merely by relying on him to help parent the children during the course of their relationship. See also Titchenal , 166 Vt. at 382-83 , 693 A.2d at 688 (noting concern that relatives, foster parents, and even day-care providers might claim rights to parent-child contact on basis of parent-like relationships). ¶ 28. These concerns do not apply to the more restrictive test articulated in Miller-Jenkins , in which the Court assigned considerable significance to the following facts: before bringing the child into their family, both parents intended and expected that the nonbiological parent would be the child's legal parent; the nonbiological mother participated in the decision that the biological mother would bear a child conceived through donor insemination and participated actively in the prenatal care and birth; both parents treated the child as a child of both the biological and nonbiological mother during the course of their relationship; and there was no other person with a claim to parental status, as the child was conceived using an anonymous sperm donor. 2006 VT 78 , ¶ 56, 180 Vt. 441 , 912 A.2d 951 . The facts and legal factors set forth in Miller-Jenkins do not raise the specter of accidentally created legal parenthood, but do allow for legally recognized parental status in limited circumstances, arising from the joint decision and actions of the legal and putative parent, even in the absence of a biological or adoptive relationship between putative parent and child or marriage (or civil union) between the parents. The parties' mutual plan to bring a child into their family to co-parent and their joint actions in pursuit of that plan distinguish Miller-Jenkins from Moreau and explain the divergent analyses in the two decisions.