ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court is raising “serious questions” about a 2019 state law that allows a judge to give someone joint custody over a former lover’s child, but the law remains intact.
The Equitable Caregiver law that went into effect in July 2019 allows someone who is not a legal parent of a child to seek custody, visitation and other rights.
To win such rights, the person must demonstrate to a judge that he or she had a “parental” role and a “bonded and dependent” relationship with the child that was “fostered or supported” by a parent of the child.
Presiding Supreme Court Justice Nels S.D. Peterson expressed concern about the law in an order on a related case.
“This case raises serious questions about whether the Equitable Caregiver Statute violates the fundamental right of parents to the care, custody, and control of their children,” Peterson wrote Tuesday in the court’s opinion in Dias v. Boone.
In that case, Abby Boone had asked the superior court in Muscogee County to give her equitable caregiver status over Michelle Dias’s minor child. The trial court decided that Boone had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that the child would suffer emotional harm by discontinuing the relationship.
The court granted Boone equitable caregiver status and required both women to follow a parenting plan.
Dias appealed the decision, challenging the constitutionality of the 2019 law.
The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision on Tuesday, sided with Dias and reversed the trial court ruling. But the high court did not strike down the law.
Instead, the justices issued a narrow ruling focused on this former couple, finding that the 2019 law did not apply because Boone’s relationship with Dias’s child predated it.