Pennsylvania Supreme Court Adopts New Avenue for Establishing Parenthood

Until March 2025, there were only four avenues for recognizing parenthood under Pennsylvania law. Now, there’s a fifth avenue, and it’s called “intent-based parentage.”

On March 20, 2025, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court handed down a precedential decision that widens the basis of parentage for people who are seeking custody of children. This is good news for people who find themselves in custody disputes in an era where technology and LGBTQ+ familial arrangements are colliding.

Four Pathways to Parentage Become Five

The Supreme Court decision came down in a case called Glover v. Junior. Chanel Glover and Nicole Junior were married when they began the process of conceiving through IVF with a sperm donor, but during the pregnancy the marriage collapsed. Glover filed for divorce while she was pregnant, and Junior sued to establish herself as a legal parent to the baby.

Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in the case, there were four pathways to establish legal parentage:

• Biology
• Adoption
• Equity (parentage by a marital presumption or estoppel)
• Contract, where a child is born using assistive reproductive technology (ART)

Biology and adoption are easy terms to understand here, but the equity and contract pathways can use some explanation.

The equity pathway has two sub-elements. Marital presumption means if you are married when the child is conceived or born, the child is presumed yours. On the other hand, estoppel is about fairness. It prevents people from assuming a position or asserting a right inconsistent with a position previously taken.

In other words, if someone claims they suspected their spouse had an affair when a child was conceived, but for years treated the child as his own, he can run into a legal challenge on the basis of estoppel if he suddenly denies paternity because he does not want to pay child support.

Then there’s contract. Children come into the world through sperm banks, IVF, and gestational carriers. The parenthood by contract doctrine ensures that surrogates and sperm donors cannot lay claim to parentage. They sign contracts containing terms expressly waiving their parental rights. Conversely, they can’t be held liable for child support, either. Sperm bank businesses wouldn’t last very long if women could come after donors demanding child support.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court was aware that these four principles didn’t cover all the bases when it came to protecting parental rights. The judiciary saw the state of legal parenthood needed to evolve. They just needed the right case to come along to facilitate a change.

The Case the Supreme Court Had Been Waiting For

There was a previous case, C.G. v. J.H., where a non-married same-sex couple got pregnant with a sperm donor. After five years of living together with the child, C.G. and J.H. separated. C.G. filed a custody complaint for partial physical and shared legal custody. She argued her case for parenthood on the basis that the child was conceived with the mutual intent of both partners.

But in that case, every level of the judiciary agreed that the evidence showed C.G. did not share the intent to conceive and raise a child with J.H., but just acquiesced to it. The courts couldn’t make a call about whether intent was a pathway to parentage because intent was not established in that case.

The Supreme Court acknowledged the need to respond to the “reality of the evolving concept of what comprises a family.” But C.G. wasn’t the right case to expand the definition of legal parenthood.

With Glover, they had their case.

Intent Does Not a Contract Make

There was a long road for Glover v. Junior. The parties argued hard about whether Junior had any parental rights based on the circumstances of their marriage, IVF journey, and divorce.

When Junior sought to establish her parentage rights, she had to convince the courts that she was a rightful parent under one of the four avenues.

Biology was out. The couple had decided that Glover would carry the pregnancy, and they chose a sperm donor together, one with physical features similar to Junior’s. But Junior did not share genetics or gestate the baby, so there was no biological relationship.

Adoption was out. There was never an opportunity to adopt. But the court noted there was evidence of an intention to adopt, which strengthened the intention argument.

Marital presumption was out because of the divorce. Estoppel didn’t fit here because it requires an analysis of the best interests of a child, but the child hadn’t been born yet, so there was no parent-child relationship or history.

That left contract, and there were several of them in evidence.

Junior signed the sperm bank contract as “co-intended parent” and the IVF contract as “partner.” There was a law firm contract in anticipation of stepparent adoption, and affidavits expressing the intent to adopt the child. The affidavits had several items indicating Junior wanted to adopt the child and become a legal parent with equal rights as the biological parent, as well as recognizing custody and support obligations in case of a divorce.

At the trial level, the court decided in Junior’s favor on the contractual grounds, stating that Pennsylvania law recognizes the validity and enforceability of contracts involving fertility treatment. However, the Superior Court reversed, holding that Junior’s parentage was not actually established by contract. Why? When there were all these contracts with the sperm bank, IVF clinic, law firm, and affidavits?

The problem was, the Superior Court said, no contract existed in this case specifically conferring parental rights on Junior. None of the contracts between Glover and service providers identified Junior as a legal parent to the child.

What is a Contract?

The Supreme Court had to answer this question when it was considering this case.

Legally, a contract must have three elements: there must be an offer made, an acceptance of terms, and consideration. Consideration means something must be exchanged, such as money, goods, or a service. It’s the price of the agreement.

This definition of contract assumes that there are two (or more) parties on either side of an equation. But that’s not how families work. Families are a unit, a team.

The Supreme Court said, “When married couples decide to have a baby together, whether by ART or not, they typically do not enter into contracts with each other.” There was no price or promise between Junior or Glover, no quid pro quo. So it was not a contract. And it usually isn’t.

“While couples who have a child together generally share the financial and emotional burdens, they do not do so as a bargained-for exchange for parentage and parental rights,” the court said. “A couple’s decision to have a baby together is often profoundly intimate and may not be so easily reduced to a transaction.”

So the Supreme Court found no contract. However, the evidence was clear that both parties mutually intended to conceive and raise a child together. There was still a compelling case for why Junior should have legal parentage. That’s why the high court created the fifth avenue.

That’s not the end of the road for Junior. It gives her a vehicle with which she can go back to the trial court with a custody complaint. But the work of this case will open the lane for parents without biological, marital, contractual, or adoption ties to a child to still have a route toward establishing parental rights if they can demonstrate intention. They just need to ensure they have the proper evidence should they ever need to go to court.

Should Couples Sign Contracts When Pursuing Artificial Insemination, IVF, or Surrogacy?

Signing a contract to have a baby might seem weird for many reasons. If we are married, isn’t that contract enough? Doesn’t a contract imply that we don’t trust each other, or will not stay together?

The Supreme Court’s decision shows that contracts between two partners concerning parental rights of a child wouldn’t necessarily hold up as contracts in the legal sense to establish parentage. Contracts need to have the three elements: offer, acceptance, and consideration. The court specifically held back on saying definitively whether or not contracts between partners to confer parental rights would pass the contract test in future cases.

But the intent-based parentage doctrine supports having couples document their intentions in black and white. And those intentions can be enough.

“While not necessarily dispositive, such writings (like the affidavits in this case) provide strong evidence of intent should a dispute arise, even if the writings do not meet the elements of a contract,” the court’s opinion said.

The fifth avenue of parentage in Pennsylvania will remove the necessity of arguing about the contract doctrine for families who find themselves in these situations. If the intent to be a parent is established by evidence, then parties will not need to prove that they have entered a contract. They just need to show that they have always intended to be there, with love and support for their kids.

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