SJC: Unmarried Gay Woman Can Claim Full Parental Rights

Even after separating from her longtime partner, a Burlington woman has won a legal battle to claim full parental right of the two children she helped raised alongside the kids' biological mother, Massachusetts' highest court ruled Tuesday.

The state's Supreme Judicial Court decision Tuesday comes in responds to the case of Julie Gallagher and Karen Partanen, two women who were together from 2001 until 2013, but never married.

According to evidence presented in the court documents:

During that time, they moved into a home together, and attempted to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization from sperm donors. When the treatment succeeded for Gallagher, Partanen was present when Gallagher gave birth to a daughter in 2007 and a son in 2012. They raised the children together as parents until their separation in 2013. Both children called Partanen "Mommy."

Nonetheless, after their separation, Partanen's petition to be declared the children's full legal parent was rejected.

She made her request based on a state statute that applies to men, which states, "a man is presumed to be the father of a child" born out of wedlock if "he, jointly with the mother, received the child into their home and openly held out the child as their child."

Because Partanen was unequivocally not the children's biological parent and had never formally adopted them, a Family Court judge dismissed her request.

Partanen appealed the decision, and the SJC issued the following ruling Tuesday:

"We consider the question whether a person may establish herself as a child's presumptive parent... in the absence of a biological relationship with the child. We conclude that she may."

Additionally, the court ruled, Partanen's cased was sufficiently strong for her to claim parentage, writing "The facts (in her initial complaint) are largely undisputed."

She did not formally adopt the children, the court documents state, but Partanen raised them from birth, "waking for night-time feedings, bathing, meal preparation, grocery shopping, transportation to/from day care and school, staying home with the children during times illness, clothes shopping, providing appropriate discipline as necessary, addressing their developmental needs, [and] comforting" them. She supported them financially, and helped make decisions about healthcare and schools, the court documents state.

The case will now return to the Probate and Family Court to answer Partanen's request for visitation with and shared legal custody of the children.

The state's Supreme Judicial Court was also the first in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage, in its 2004 Goodridge v. Department of Public Health ruling.

The state's attorney general commended the ruling Tuesday afternoon:

In a GoFundMe page seeking financial assistance for her legal battle, Partanen, of Burlington, wrote:

"Currently, I am permitted to see my children fewer than 7 days a month, have temporarily been denied legal rights and I have been ordered to pay child support, which I have been doing willingly for a year and a half. Due to the fees related to obtaining justice for our children, I am concerned that someday they will have to ask me 'Mommy, why did you give up on us?' No child should ever be put in a position to ask such a question, so I hope to resolve this costly and distressful circumstance respectfully through the family court system."

According to that page, Partanen has been serving as a "de facto" (but not legal) parent of the children since October 2015.

According to the Associated Press, Gallagher challenged Partanen's 2014 bid for full legal parentage, stating: "I am a biological mother. I wanted to have children. They're my world, and it's my right to make legal decisions for them."

Read more on this case from the AP here.

Read the SJC's decision in full here.

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