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

Heading: Promoting the Welfare of Children

Text: ¶ 29. This narrow framework focusing on the pre-conception agreement of the parents would promote the welfare of children without undermining parental rights. As this Court has repeatedly recognized,  the core purpose of our various laws relating to parent-child status is to protect the welfare of children. See, e.g., In re B.L.V.B. , 160 Vt. at 371 , 628 A.2d at 1273 (In interpreting Vermont's adoption statutes, we are mindful that the state's primary concern is to promote the welfare of children ....). The Court's paramount concern should be with the effect of our laws on the reality of children's lives. Id. at 376 , 628 A.2d at 1276 . ¶ 30. The even narrower view-limiting parental status to individuals who are biologically linked to the child, have legally adopted, or are married or joined in civil union with the child's legal parent at birth-would have dire consequences for many children. Under such a regime, even if two parents mutually agree to bring a child into their home and raise that child together, even if the child comes into the home with no other potential parental attachments (because, for example, the child was conceived through anonymous sperm donation), even if those parents raise the child as fully equal co-parents, even if the parents themselves intended and believed they were both the child's legal parents, and even if neither the child nor anyone in the world outside of the child's family ever had any reason to doubt that both parties were, in fact, the child's legal parents, upon termination of the parties' relationship with each other the children can legally be denied any continued relationship with one of the parents and any financial or other support from that parent. It is hard to imagine how such an approach that allows for a complete and involuntary severing of a lifelong parent-child relationship could possibly promote children's welfare. In many cases, the consequences of such a rule would be nothing short of tragic. ¶ 31. The New York Court of Appeals recently recognized the negative impact on children of a doctrine that entirely foreclosed nonbiological and nonadoptive parents from seeking parental rights, even when they had planned with a partner to bring a child into the family, noting that [a] growing body of social science reveals the trauma children suffer as a result of separation from a primary attachment figure ... regardless of that figure's biological or adoptive ties to the children. Brooke S.B. v. Elizabeth A.C.C. , 28 N.Y.3d 1 , 39 N.Y.S.3d 89 , 61 N.E.3d 488 , 499 (2016). That court observed that a rule that fixates on biology has inflicted disproportionate hardship on the growing number of nontraditional families in that state. Id. ¶ 32. Our prior cases reflect a concern for protecting the parental rights of a legally recognized parent by refusing to dilute those rights by recognizing a second legally recognized parent on the basis that the latter at some point assumed parental responsibilities for the child. But where a parent jointly plans and conceives a child with a partner, with the mutual intent and agreement to raise that child together, that parent has no reasonable expectation of sole parental rights in the event of a breakup. The understanding that our cases reject a broad theory of de facto parenthood, but at the same time recognize a narrow class of cases in which neither marriage nor biology is a prerequisite to parental status, protects against the erosion of the reasonable expectations of legal parents while ensuring that children in those families can benefit from the ongoing relationship with and support of a lifelong parent.