A court in Canada ruled a child legally has three parents – Bill, Eliza and Olivia.
Justice Sandra Wilkinson in British Columbia explained in her April 26 ruling she was filling a “gap” in the law, which “did not foresee the possibility a child might be conceived through sexual intercourse and have more than two parents.”
Bill and Eliza are the biological parents of the child, and Eliza has been in a “romantic” relationship with them for several years.
In British Columbia, the law allows three “parents” of a child conceived by donor or surrogate to be listed. But that does not apply to polyamorous trios in which the child is conceived naturally.
British Columbia’s attorney general, David Eby, warned that the ruling would “open the floodgates for parentage declarations in the future.”
Canada’s CBC News reported the participants in the case all have been “anonymized” by the court.
The judge concluded the legislature, in writing the law, failed to “contemplate polyamorous families.”
Canada has established other precedents regarding the makeup of the modern family. An Ontario court ruled that two women could be listed as mothers alongside a man who helped them start a family.
Later, a Canadian court ruled a man who donated sperm to a female same-sex couple could have his name listed on the birth certificates of the children born to the women.
Olivia’s lawyer, Catherine Wong, said the ruling is a “sign we’re seeing that the law is actually catching up to the reality of polyamorous families or multi-parent families in British Columbia.”
“In that sense, it’s a very important case because it recognizes the diversity of families in B.C. and that the law was not working for all families until now,” she said.
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