recognizing that the situation in which the partner does not participate in the decision to conceive "parallel[s] the situation in which a woman, already pregnant or a mother, becomes involved with or marries a man who is not the biological or adoptive father of the child, but thereafter fully functions in every respect as a father"
How later courts described this case
- recognizing that the situation in which the partner does not participate in the decision to conceive "parallel[s] the situation in which a woman, already pregnant or a mother, becomes involved with or marries a man who is not the biological or adoptive father of the child, but thereafter fully functions in every respect as a father"
- holding that the State may intervene to grant visitation over the objections of a parent where the child's psychological parent `has stepped in to assume the role of the legal parent who has been unable or unwilling to undertake the obligations of parenthood'
- holding that "[t}hird parties who live in familial circumstances with a child and his or her legal parent may achieve, with the consent of the legal parent, a psychological parent status vis-a-vis a child" (emphasis added)
- explaining that “the ending of the relationship between the legal parent and the third party does not end the bond that the legal parent fostered and that actually developed between the child and the [de facto] parent”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Pb v. Th, 370 N.J. Super. 586 (2004)
Thereafter, the court determined that the four-prong test to evaluate whether a third party had become a psychological parent, prescribed in V.C., supra, 163 N.J. 200, 748 A.2d 539, was inapplicable to the factual circumstances of the case because the parties did not have a "couple relationship" or "an intentionally shared family life.
The opinion
O’HERN, J.,
concurring.
I concur in the opinion and judgment of the Court. I agree that the degree of intrusion on parental autonomy is properly resolved here by the standard set forth in the Court’s opinion. I adhere to the views expressed in my dissenting opinion in Watkins v. Nelson, 163 N.J. 235 , 748 A.2d 558 (2000), that the determination of custody following the death of a custodial parent requires a *231 different standard in order to protect a grieving child from being removed from her home before she may be able to bear the twin losses of a parent and the familiar presence of those family members who, until then, had provided her nurture and love.