Vt. judge: Birth mom must transfer custody of 7-year-old daughter to former lesbian partner

The Associated Press ^ | Dec. 30, 2009 | Wilson Ring

[walford]

...Miller and Jenkins were joined in a Vermont civil union in 2000. Isabella was born to Miller through artificial insemination in 2002. The couple broke up in 2003, and Miller moved to Virginia, renounced homosexuality and became an evangelical Christian.

Cohen awarded custody of the girl to Jenkins on Nov. 20 after finding Miller in contempt of court for denying Jenkins access to the girl.

The judge said the only way to ensure equal access to the child was to switch custody. He also said the benefits to the child of having access to both parents would be worth the difficulties of the change...

[NurdlyPeon]

Was the non-birth woman paying child support?

Probably the best single sentence on this thread.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Our marriage laws developed in a society in which many people were completely illiterate, and many more were barely literate. It was a minority of citizens who were equipped to negotiate a written contract and really know what was in it. Contracts of all kinds especially land purchases) and marriage licenses too, were quite often “signed” with an X, next to which someone else (a witness or occasionally an attorney, had written “John Doe, his mark”. Illiteracy to the degree of not being able to write one’s own name is obviously a huge obstacle to negotiating a contract and knowing what you were signing. Women were also regarded as chattel by the law — they were owned by their fathers until marriage tranferred ownership to their husbands.

While that state of affairs explains the utility of government-defined marriage, it’s worth noting that at that time, most if not all states fully recognized common law marriage, i.e. if a man and woman lived as husband and wife, and presented themselves to others as husband and wife, then they were just as married in the eyes of the law as a couple who had an actual marriage license and/or had been married by a member of the clergy.