All children need – and deserve – the emotional and financial support parents provide. Clear guidance on how to establish legal child-parent relationships is critical for family stability and judicial consistency, but such guidance is sadly missing in our current statutory law.  Unfortunately, this has resulted in sparse judicial guidance in the Commonwealth, giving rise to a county-by-county patchwork of law that creates uncertainty for Pennsylvania’s children and families.

Our bill, the Uniform Parentage Act, will change that by providing clear rules for the determination of legal parentage, particularly for children born through assisted reproduction. It also provides safeguards for individuals acting as surrogates, and equal protection for ALL children and families, regardless of the marital status of the parents or the circumstances of the children’s birth. The UPA will protect children from protracted, harmful litigation, and help to ensure continuity in the emotional and financial support of their parents.

As a uniform law, the UPA is the product of a non-partisan deliberative process conducted by the Uniform Law Commission. As such, it recognizes the importance of consistency in this area of the law not just in Pennsylvania, but across the country, as our society becomes more and more mobile. To date, the law has been enacted in eight states.

This legislation was introduced last session as HB 350 and passed the House with bipartisan support. It has the support of numerous stakeholder groups, including the Pennsylvania Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the National Child Support Enforcement Association, the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys, the Pennsylvania Interbranch Commission on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness, the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and the National Infertility Association.

            Please join us in sponsoring this important legislation.

Statutes/Laws affected:
Printer's No. 1276: 20-2104(4)