A recent court ruling in Quebec has granted multi-parental families in the province the same legal rights as any other unit.
A Quebec Superior Court judge ruled on Friday that limiting the legal affiliation of children to one or two parents is unconstitutional.
Lawyer Marc-André Landry, who represented one of the families involved in the case, explains the ruling does not apply to step-parents or other “modern” families that are formed after a child is born.
Rather, it applies to a situation where a family has multiple adults involved in a relationship before the child’s conception.
In other words, Landry notes, the “parental project” needs to be in place prior to the child’s creation.
“It’s not about step-parents or other potential realities, it’s really about three people sitting together and saying, ‘We should have a child together,’” he explains. “No one should be treated differently because of their family status.”
There were three families who were part of the case, according to Landry.
The first constitutes a “throuple,” three adults – a man and two women – in a relationship, with four children among them.
The second involves a lesbian couple and a male donor who wished to be part of the child’s life as a father figure.
The third includes a woman living with infertility who allowed her husband to have a child with a friend, who asked to remain on as a mother.
“Those families do exist, no matter what people may think,” said Landry, calling the move a “major” change in our collective legal comprehension. “You have kids whose affiliation, from a legal standpoint, does not match their reality.”
Landry equates Friday’s ruling to the changing views of same-sex families during the 1980s and 1990s.
“The law has evolved, and homosexual families do exist, are accepted, and it’s not actually an issue anymore in Canada,” he said. “It’s the same thing here. The law needs to evolve to match the reality of all Canadian citizens, and those babies who have not chosen to be born in multi-parental families. They must have the same protection, same rights as any other babies under the law.”
Landry points out that multi-parent families already have legal standing in several other Canadian provinces, including Ontario and British Columbia.
The Quebec government now has 12 months to amend the Civil Code to match the ruling.
