North Carolina Supreme Court Invalidates 2nd Parent Adoptions
Posted By Eric Ethington (Author) on December 20, 2010
North Carolina – The State Supreme Court has just ruled 5-2 that 2nd parent adoptions are no longer legal. A State Legislator’s partner is now having the rights over her son stripped away from her.
State Senator Julia Boseman’s partner Melissa Jarrell legally adopted her partner’s biological son. But now the State Supreme Court has stepped in and ruled that she no longer has rights over her son unless his biological mother, her former partner, terminates all legal relationships with him. This ruling has shut the door on all other 2nd parent adoptions, and it’s unclear what will happen to all the existing 2nd parent adoptions that have already occurred in the state.
Melissa Jarrell, Jacob and Senator Julia Boseman
The state Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the adoption of Melissa Jarrell’s son by state Sen. Julia Boseman was invalid because a Durham County District Court judge waived a requirement five years ago that Jarrell had to give up her parental rights in the process.
Under the adoption plan approved by the lower court, Boseman became an adoptive parent while Jarrell retained full parental rights as well.
"Eric, trying to have this (civil rights) conversation with you is ultimately like trying to teach a pig to dance, it just annoys the pig. So Eric, sorry to annoy you."
-Paul Mero, The Sutherland Institute.
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Help me understand the issue here – the child’s parents split and both retained parental rights. That is common. In the cases I’m aware of, a step parent can’t legally adopt without the existing other “original” parent signing away their own parental rights. That’s as true for straights as for gays.
It would appear the issue here is that the first judge granted wavers that were improper.
@Arthur It seems to me that there wasn’t another biological parent involved… it is an issue that if this were a straight couple, and the non biological partner were to adopt, there would not have been any issue.
@Gemma: I think this case actually affects all couples and situations wherein one parent is bio and one is not; the problem seems to be that the State Supreme Court says the bio parent must waive all legal rights to a child before anyone else adopts. Which defeats the purpose of having a second-parent adoption (which is done for legal as well as emotional purposes).
Terrible, terrible case, and Melissa Jarrell is absolutely heartless to remove parenthood from the woman who was with her when the child was born and has helped raised him for 8 years!
Gotta agree with Matthew R here. Regardless of what the circumstance of this particular case was, to rule that all 2nd parent adoptions are void creates more problems than just for the LGBT community. And what about all the existing 2nd parent adoptions? Are they all going to be voided retroactively?
Second parent adoptions are tricky, and can have many consequences both intended and unexpected, for many involved parties. I haven’t though through them much, except for this excerpt from my book where I rebut an anti-SSM argument (http://prideinutah.com/?p=6846):
“Adam: “However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child’s development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes.
My response: See contention in previous paragraph. Does the empirically verified wisdom the author refers to find mother/father families superior to single parent and step-parent families only? Have those studies examined the comparison of two-parent homosexual households to two-parent heterosexual households? The latter comparison is necessary to support his conclusion. That an opposite sex couple parents better than a single parent does not imply that an opposite gender couple parents better than a same-sex couple- non sequitur. In any case, most of the children of same-sex couples are adopted- which means that the choice is not as frequently between an opposite and a same sex couple as parents, but instead between having no parent and having two parents. At the least, for the vast majority of adopted children, the ideal of being raised by the child’s two biological parents is simply not feasible. Indeed, SSM may well encourage more adoption- and there is little doubt that a loving SSM home is better for a child on average than no adopted home .
Additionally, we must remember some of the salutary effects on children. Given that large numbers are and in the near future will continue to be raised in same-sex couple households, it would make good policy sense to encourage the marriage of the same-sex couple:
“[S]uppose that Ann makes use of artificial insemination to conceive a child, Bernard. Suppose further than Ann is raising Bernard with her partner, Nancy… Permitting [Nancy] to adopt can have a number of benefits for the child, e.g., he will be eligible to be covered under Nancy’s employer-provided insurance policy. However, in some jurisdictions, a non-marital partner is not allowed to adopt unless the parent is willing to surrender her own parental rights. Thus, in some jurisdictions, unless Nancy and Ann were married or Ann was willing to surrender her own parental rights, Nancy would not be permitted to establish a legal relationship with Bernard, and Bernard would be unable to avail himself of various financial benefits to which he would have been entitled had he been recognized as Nancy’s child…Nancy might be more willing to invest in her relationship with Bernard if that relationship were accorded legal protection. ”
If Ann were to die in a car crash, Bernard might be sent to a home with people he doesn’t know if Nancy is a legal stranger to him- despite their relationship. (interestingly, even in those jurisdiction that allow second parent adoptions to compensate for the unavailability of marriage to same-sex reduces the incentive to marry and increases the number of children raised out of wedlock, partly because unmarried heterosexual couples have begun to avail themselves of second parent adoption ). Similarly, if Anna and Nancy break up, Anna could forbid Nancy from seeing Bernard, even if it would have been better for Bernard to maintain relationships with both of the adults who raised him since infancy.
We should also consider benefits that accrue to the aged. More and more adults are acting as caregivers for their own parents- and without marital benefits such as being covered by a spouse’s insurance policy or the increased security that derives from a formal commitment, the adult child may be simply unable to stop work to care for an aging parent (or, for that matter, a sick or disabled child or a sick spouse). These consequences may result in a greater burden on the state to pick up the slack, inferior care for the spouse, child, and/or aged parent.
Last, imposing optimal parenting requirements for marriage strikes most of us as ridiculous. We wouldn’t stop a poor couple from getting married, or a minority, or someone raised in a divorced household, or someone that uses drugs, or doesn’t intend to procreate, irrespective of how those factors might contribute to their parenting fitness:
“Yet, as a general matter, we do not impose an optimal-parent requirement on those seeking to marry. Indeed, we do not even impose an optimal parent requirement on those seeking to adopt. Nor would anyone think of proposing such a standard were this not a discussion of same-sex marriage or LGBT parenting. That this criterion is suggested only in the context of LGBT parenting or marriage suggests that this criterion is not really embraced as the appropriate consideration to determine who may marry or adopt but, instead, is being used as a makeweight to justify the imposition of a burden on members of the LGBT community. ””
Let me know if you want the references- one points to a fuller discussion of some pros and cons of second parent adoptions.