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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Courts - Kentucky appeals court rejects adoption by lesbian couple

Andrew Wolfson of the Louisville Courier Journal writes today in a very long story about a complex decision issued this week in the case of S.J.L.S. v. T.L.S - access the 61-page opinion here. Some quotes from Wolfson's article:

In a harshly worded opinion, the Kentucky Court of Appeals has barred judges from allowing lesbians to adopt as though they are a stepparent.
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Ruling 3-0 in a Jefferson County case, the court said that stepparent adoptions are allowed only when the stepmother or father is married to the biological parent, and marriages between gays are forbidden by both statute and Kentucky's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

In a 62-page ruling issued Friday about the case, the court said that with a "wink-wink" and a "nod-nod," Family Court Judge Eleanore Garber and lawyers for a lesbian couple ignored those laws.

And as many as three or four family court judges in Jefferson County may have allowed such adoptions, the opinion said.

"It is not this or any court's role to judge whether the legislature's prohibition of same-sex marriage ... is morally defensible or socially enlightened," Judge Glenn Acree of Lexington wrote for the court in the decision that criticized Garber and the lawyers involved.

"Nor is it this or any court's role ... to craft any means by which the legal consequences of such a prohibition may be negated or avoided."

The case involved two women identified only as S.J.L.S. and T.L.S. and their son, identified as Z, who is now 8.

The court allowed T's adoption of Z, but only because S waited more than a year to challenge it, and Kentucky law says adoptions can't be attacked for any reason after more than one year.

Regardless of that case's outcome, however, the court said "stepparent-like adoption" does not exist under the laws of Kentucky. "We wish to make this point perfectly clear." * * *

Ten states now recognize so called "stepparent-like adoptions," according to the ACLU, including most recently Colorado, which last year enacted a law allowing same-sex couples, as well as grandparents, aunts, uncles and other relatives, to jointly adopt children.

The bill's sponsor said it would protect the rights of children in nontraditional families by ensuring that they remain with one parent if something happens to the other.

Advocates say that if a child can't be adopted by his second parent, the child loses the right to inherit property from that parent, or receive Social Security benefits or life insurance benefits, or to be eligible for health insurance under that parent's policy or to sue for their wrongful death. * * *

Diana Skaggs, president of the Kentucky Chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Attorneys, said the ruling will bar unmarried heterosexual partners from adopting, even if they provide all the love and caring that a married parent might provide.

But Skaggs noted that the opinion is harsher for gays, who cannot marry in Kentucky.

See Skaggs' respected Kentucky Divorce and Family Law Blog here, and particularly this entry today.

A quick review of the ILB turned up these two entries, from: Sept. 3, 2004 and Feb. 16, 2005.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 16, 2008 08:48 AM
Posted to Courts in general