Brian C. v. Ginger K.

I. Introduction

The trial court granted summary judgment in this “conclusive presumption” and “standing” paternity case even though the plaintiff had lived with the mother (a woman married to someone else), raised the child as his own for the first year of the child’s life, and continued to visit the child after he and the mother broke up. For the trial court, the facts that the child was conceived while the mother was cohabiting with her husband and that her husband was neither impotent nor sterile were absolutely dispositive.

We reverse. As a group of California Supreme Court and United States Supreme Court cases demonstrate, there are times when the due process clause of the federal Constitution precludes states from applying substantive rules of paternity law which have the effect of terminating an existing father-child relationship. This case is one of them. In particular, because the child was not “bom into” an extant marital union (in any meaningful sense) and because the plaintiff developed a substantial parent-child relationship with the child immediately upon her birth and for a year and one-half thereafter, he can bring an action to be declared the legal…