Thursday, March 17, 2011 – Nancy Polikoff - Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage It’s always risky to predict the outcome of a case based on oral argument. Nonetheless, I’ll predict that the Arkansas Supreme Court will affirm the decision of a trial judge in Cole v. Arkansas Dept. of Human Services that the state’s ban on adoption and fostering by anyone living with a nonmarital partner violates the state’s constitution....

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 – Nancy Polikoff Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage Two years ago, in an opinion I criticized extensively, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that a woman whose partner was a child’s only legal parent (through adoption) lacked standing to obtain custody or visitation when the couple split up. In response to that decision, the Delaware legislature amended its definition of “parent” to include de facto parents,...

Huffington Post – Frederick Hertz – March 8, 2011 A recent decision by the Texas Court of Appeals in Houston illustrates the complexity — and the nastiness — of one particularly ugly gay divorce. The partners lived in Houston but they traveled to Canada in 2003 to get married and then they registered as domestic partners in California in 2005. Because of the restrictions on gay partnerships and parentage in Texas, they arranged...