In 2000 in Troxel v. Granville, four United States Supreme Court justices determined that the “liberty interests of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children” generally foreclose states from compelling ...

American state parentage laws have evolved significantly in the past half century in response to changes in both reproductive technologies and human conduct. Yet further evolution, if not a revolution, seems inevitable. ...

American state parentage laws have traditionally required biological or adoptive ties and no more than two parents for any one child at any one time. Biological ties were demonstrated by giving birth or sperm. Adoptive ...

In Illinois, the “liberty interests of parents” are reflected in the “superior rights doctrine,” which holds, as elsewhere, that parents have superior rights regarding the care of their children. This doctrine is necessitated ...

Not too long ago American state laws chiefly designated parentage at precise moments in time. One became a parent upon giving birth; upon having one’s spouse give birth; upon formal adoption; upon completion of a birth ...

Legal parentage under American state laws is significantly and rapidly evolving. And, it is increasingly imprecise. No longer is legal parentage only defined at precise moments in time or for particular conduct, as by ...

Recognizing the need for reforms involving, inter alia, parental and third-party childcare interests, the Illinois General Assembly created a study committee, resulting in several proposed amendments to the Illinois Parentage ...

For ever so long U.S. state laws have recognized the federal constitutional right to “care, custody and control” of a child vested in the opposite sex married couple who bore the child of sex or in any formal adoptive ...

Child caretaking in the United States today frequently is undertaken by adults who do not operate under court orders or private agreements. The adults may, but need not then be, legal parents. There are usually constraints ...

Recently, several quite distinguished commentators have asked how, if at all, the U.S. Supreme Court will speak, after its same sex marriage ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, to interstate inequalities involving the federal ...