CALIFORNIA – Gov. Jerry Brown has signed the Protection of Parent-Child Relationships Act (AB 1349). The bill will allow the courts to determine who a child’s parents are in cases where there is both a non-biological parent and a man who has signed a voluntary declaration of paternity.
“California courts must be able to take into consideration the established relationship between a parent and child when determining legal parentage,” said Equality California Executive Director Roland Palencia. “The Protection of Parent-Child relationship Act ensures that families are not broken up ….”
This bill fixes a problem caused by a recent case that said that courts cannot recognize a non-biological parent who has raised the child if another man signed a voluntary paternity declaration, even if the man who signed the declaration had no relationship with the child and no intention of raising the child.
Because of this case, children with non-biological parents are vulnerable to losing the parent they have always known. For example, when a same-sex or opposite-sex couple uses a sperm donor to conceive a child, if the couple later separates and the sperm donor and the biological mother sign a declaration of paternity, the non-biological parent may not be legally recognized as a parent.
