I don’t know how much worse things can get. I’ve seen some horrific custody situations, and I’ll bet you have, too:
Any time there are changes to an existing law that affects the rights of individuals, there is bound to be confusion. When that law can affect the rights of a parent or a child, the confusion can be scary. But can the confusion be resolved with education, or does the law create real problems?
Washington State has long adhered to the Uniform Parentage Act (UPA) in determining the rights of parents and children. However, the most recent revision to the UPA, as it is commonly known, has set off a multitude of slippery slope discussions, wherein every child has five parents, and no one knows who can make decisions. Washington State adopted these revisions in early 2018. Has it sown unsurprising but unnecessary confusion, or does it create real problems?
“The biggest flashpoint with the revised UPA has been the ‘de facto parent’ provision,” said Edward Weinstein, a family law attorney with the Law Offices of Edward R. Weinstein. “Most states recognize rights of individuals other than the biological parent,” said Weinstein. “The most common example is some sort of right to visitation or custody in grandparents that have been heavily involved in the life of a child. The problem is that there is no consistency to these laws from state to state,” he said.
What the UPA tries to do is create a statutory framework that allows a non-biological individual to petition the court for recognition as a “de facto parent,” which would make the individual a parent of the child. Reading that sentence alone would scare any parent – the thought of some strange person seeking to be made a parent of your child is horrifying. The UPA thinks the same thing and in no uncertain terms, outlines very specific requirements for any seeking to be made a de facto parent.
“The de facto parent section of the UPA is pretty clear that it will only grant de facto parent status to individuals who have more or less been a parent. Think grandparents, aunts, or uncles that took children in and raised them. They may not be biological parents, but they are who that child looks to as a parent,” said Weinstein. “If the biological parents came back around after three or four years, they could take those kids away and the grandparents could not do a thing. With the revised UPA, there is a clear framework for those grandparents to use to try and gain some rights over the child,” he said.
So, does the revised UPA create real problems? “If by problems you mean unintended consequences, then sure, those always happen with any law. But what it does not do is create a world where children will have numerous parents and no one with the authority to act,” said Weinstein.
