New York Lesbian Co-Parent Custody Claim Precluded under 12-Year-Old Decision

artleonardobservations.com, October 8, 2013

The evil that courts do lives on…  On October 4, 2013, the New York Law Journal published Rockland County Family Court Referee Dean Richardson-Mendelson’s opinion in Matter of A.F. v. K.H., V-00918-13, rejecting all attempts by a lesbian co-parent to obtain judicial relief against her former partner’s action of excluding her from contact with the children they had been raising together.  The principal barrier to her case is the N.Y. Court of Appeal’s old decision, Alison D. v. Virginia M., 77 N.Y.2d 651 (1991), which held in similar circumstances that the co-parent was, despite her relationship parental relationship with a child since the child’s birth, a “legal stranger” who did not have standing under New York law to obtain a declaration of her parental rights, custody or visitation, and that the circumstances that the women had agreed to raise a child together did not amount to “special circumstances” required under New York law to enable a legally-unrelated third party to seek custody of a child.

In A.F. v. K.H., the parents had registered as domestic partners, but the court mentions this only in passing and does not specify the jurisdiction.  A.F. and K.H. were living together as a couple when they decided to have children, using anonymous donor insemination for K.H. to conceive two children.  They lived together raising the children until they separated in July 2011, but continued to live on different floors in the same house, facilitating continued contact between A.F. and the children, who lived with K.H.  In February 2012 K.H. moved out with the children to her mother’s house in New Jersey, but then relocated back to another town in New York State in August 2012.  A.F. continued to have visitation two days a week and alternate weekends, until a promotion at her job made weekday visitation impossible.

A.F. contributed to the support of the children financially.  In May 2012, K.H. had filed a petition in Rockland Family Court seeking formal child support from A.G.  In support of this claim, her petition was full of factual allegations seeking to persuade the court that A.F. was a parent of the children who should be held to this responsibility.  But in August, she withdrew the petition, and the Support Magistrate marked it as withdrawn.

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