My next question is, who is Nic's biological father?
This mess is one of the ladies' own making. And yes, I do feel sorry for the child.
Yep. As a lawyer, I handled a number of messes for single, straight mothers. My advice to women then, as it is now, is get married. Marriage offers protections that living together does not. It is difficult for me to clean up your messes when you didn't do the one thing that would have avoided 90% of your messes in the first place.
For gay women, all of these arrangements can be made contractually. The child should have been adopted as soon as it was born. The 'happy couple' should have looked into SS to see whether it would pay out on the death or disability of either parent, or just the birth parent. If they wanted to assure that one parent could stay home if the other died, they should have bought a larger life insurance (term) policy.
This reminds me of the woman who was on O'Reilly crying because she didn't get money after her live-in boyfriend and father of their 2 kids was killed on 9/11. Get married! Or keep your legs closed. I don't care which you do, but don't come crying to me when sh!t happens, cause it will. (she was able to get money for the children)
ps - I lost my husband suddenly. I know what these people are going through and I don't say any of this to be uncaring. However, I also had a plan in place that allowed my son and I to make choices and not have choices made for us.