Mass. Parentage Act Reintroduced
Massachusetts, which led the nation in marriage equality, has fallen behind in updating its parentage laws to protect the children of LGBTQ parents and others regardless of the circumstances of their birth. A bill has just been reintroduced to change that.
Current Massachusetts law does not treat children equally if they are born via assisted reproduction, surrogacy, or to same-sex parents who aren't married. The Massachusetts Parentage Act Coalition, which is spearheading the push for change, explains on its website that some must wait six months or longer to establish a legal parent-child relationship. Additionally, de facto parents, those who have functioned as full parents with the consent of the legal parent, are not treated as equal parents under the law. And overall, there are standards in need of clarification and precedents in need of codification so that courts can have greater consistency and efficiency in establishing parentage claims. Massachusetts is now the only New England state that has not comprehensively reformed its parentage laws to account for the diversity of family forms today.
An Act to Ensure Legal Parentage Equality (HD.2348/SD.1088), also known as the Massachusetts Parentage Act (MPA), was filed at the end of January by lead House sponsors Rep. Sarah Peake and Rep. Hannah Kane and lead Senate sponsors Senator Julian Cyr and Senator Bruce Tarr. The bill clearly asserts who can be a parent and the many ways to establish parentage; clarifies that a de facto parent has equal rights and responsibilities to any other type of parent; removes gendered language from parentage statutes; and adds protections for children born through assisted reproduction, including surrogacy. It also expands access to Voluntary Acknowledgments of Parentage (VAPs), simple, free forms that can be completed at the hospital immediately after a birth to establish legal parentage.
The MPA is based on the 2017 Uniform Parentage Act (UPA), model parentage legislation developed by the Uniform Law Commission, a non-partisan body of state lawmakers, judges, scholars, and lawyers. Several states have already adopted provisions of the UPA, including Connecticut, which enacted a comprehensive update to its parentage laws in 2021, and Maine, which in 2021 extended VAPs to LGBTQ parents.
A version of the MPA introduced last session had bipartisan support and gained a hearing before the Legislature's Joint Committee on the Judiciary in November 2021, where legal and child welfare experts, LGBTQ advocates, children of LGBTQ parents, and LGBTQ parents testified to the need for updating parentage law. It was, however, unable to move to the next stage of the legislative process during a busy legislative session.
The MPA Coalition, led by LGBTQ legal advocacy group GLAD and fertility education and advocacy group Resolve New England, now includes more than 40 legal, health care, social service, and LGBTQ organizations. Those endorsing the bill last session also included the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office under now-Governor Maura Healey, the City of Boston, the Boston Globe Editorial Board, and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.
In an e-mail to supporters on February 1, the coalition said it is "more determined than ever" to pass the bill. It is now urging Massachusetts residents to ask their state representatives and senators to co-sponsor the MPA and encourages people to visit its website at massparentage.com to find tools for doing so, to learn more, and to see how else they can get involved.
