PARENTAGE | McLaughlin v. Jones in and for County of Pima

Statutory marital paternity presumption cannot, consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, be restricted to only opposite-sex couples; the marital paternity presumption is a benefit of marriage, and the state cannot deny same-sex spouses the same benefits afforded opposite-sex spouses. Mother was equitably stopped from rebutting her same-sex spouse's presumptive parentage of child in dissolution proceedings; mother and spouse agreed that they intended for mother to be artificially inseminated with an anonymous sperm donor and that mother gave birth to the child during the marriage, they signed a joint parenting agreement during the pregnancy declaring spouse a “co-parent” of the child and their intent that the parenting relationship between spouse and child would continue if mother and spouse's relationship ended, and, after the birth, spouse stayed home to care for child during first two years of his life.

No. CV-16-0266-PR

(Arizona Supreme Court, September 19, 2017)