More courts allowing three parents of one child

Sixteen-year-old Madison’s family gathered in a California courtroom to mark the day it became official: she is legally recognized as having three parents.

The adults she calls Mom, Dad, and Mama were present at her birth, having decided to raise a child together after approaching a male friend. They shared the responsibilities of raising Madison and participated in her upbringing, including their shared Christmas traditions.

Legally, however, Victoria Bianchi only became her daughter’s parent this past fall. She joins a small but growing group of Americans who have successfully petitioned courts and legislatures to grant legal standing to what is often termed “tri-parenting.”

“I just felt like I’ve been holding my breath for the last 16 years,” Bianchi said. “She’s already been my daughter … she’s finally, legally mine.”

Bianchi utilized a 2013 California statute that allows a child to have more than two legal parents. A similar measure was enacted in Maine last year. Courts in at least 10 other states, including New York this past winter, have recognized third parents in recent years, even as some legal experts express concerns that additional parents could lead to increased conflict.

American courts have long provided certain rights to grandparents, stepparents, and other figures in a child’s life, but parents possess a uniquely broad set of rights and responsibilities.

Advocates argue that recognizing a third parent—whether through a birth certificate, adoption, or a custody ruling—acknowledges the reality of modern family structures. This includes same-sex couples who conceive with a friend, men seeking to maintain paternal roles after DNA testing identifies another biological father, and various other arrangements.

The legal landscape is becoming increasingly complex. For instance, new medical techniques designed to prevent rare diseases now allow children to be born with a small amount of DNA from a third individual.

Without legal protections, some parents and children risk being separated, according to Cathy Sakimura of the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights, which helped draft the California law.

However, some courts have resisted expanding the definition of parenthood. A 2014 Wyoming Supreme Court ruling raised questions about the potential for an endless multiplication of parents as mothers and fathers enter new relationships.

While there is little research specifically focused on tri-parenting, experts remain divided on the potential impact on children.

Anita Jones Thomas, a professor at the University of Indianapolis who leads the American Psychological Association’s child-and-family section, sees potential benefits. “That extra sense of social support has really been found to be beneficial for children,” she says.

Conversely, W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, points to research—though not specifically on tri-parenting—suggesting that children in stable, two-parent households generally fare better educationally and emotionally than those in other arrangements.

“This is going to be a family form where children are exposed to more complexity and more instability,” he says.

When a casual suggestion about having a baby together evolved into a serious conversation, Kitty Stillufsen, her longtime friend Darren Greenblatt, and his husband, Sam Hunt, did not anticipate how complicated tri-parenting would become.

The girl was born in 2009, carrying the genes of Greenblatt and Stillufsen, and Hunt’s surname. They spent parts of the child’s early life together in Stillufsen’s New Jersey home. Later, the Manhattan-based men rented a house in Stillufsen’s seaside hometown during the summers, which was her busiest time managing her family’s restaurant. She and the child spent the winters in Costa Rica.

“We’re a family. We’re the real thing,” Stillufsen told Marie Claire magazine in 2011.

Determining that Hunt was a “psychological parent,” a New Jersey judge awarded custody to all three adults in 2015 and blocked Stillufsen’s planned relocation. All three now reside in New Jersey.

Hunt was not declared a legal parent, however. The judge noted that lawmakers must decide whether to grant such recognition, as it represents a social policy choice with “far-reaching implications.”

Regardless, Hunt, a teacher, says the ruling provided him “a sense of security and peace” following “the pain of having to defend that relationship and prove that relationship.”

For Stillufsen, however, tri-parenting has devolved into a two-against-one conflict.

The judge determined that she and Greenblatt were fit parents. “Why do we need a third?” she asks. She also questions where courts will eventually draw the line regarding who qualifies as a parent.

“At what point does it end?” says Stillufsen, who is currently training to be a teacher. “How many parents can a child possibly have?”

She now views tri-parenting as “logically dangerous territory” that risks creating instability for children. Greenblatt and Hunt maintain that it can work, provided there is detailed planning.

“We were naive,” says Greenblatt, a fashion entrepreneur and bakery co-founder. “Our example should be a cautionary tale.”

“But then again, we have this beautiful, smart, funny, amazing kid,” he says.

Tri-parenting has not been simple for Victoria Bianchi, her former partner Kimberli Bonner, and their friend Mark Shumway. When Bonner gave birth to Madison in 2000, the law only recognized two parents, meaning Bianchi could not adopt unless one of the others relinquished their parental status. Shumway knew it was important to Bianchi, but “I could not do that, sign away the rights to my daughter,” he says.

Bianchi was heartbroken by the limitations of not being a legal mother. The insurance estimator once cried after trying to register the girl for kindergarten and being told: “Oh, you’re not a parent?”

Still, the three adults collaborated: “Madison was the most important thing to all of us, so we just wanted, whatever the differences, to work through it,” says Bonner, a claims adjuster for a tech company. Shumway, a real estate agent, values their three-parent family so much that he hopes to form another with his husband and a woman.

Madison Bonner-Bianchi says her relationship with her parents is similar to anyone else’s—”I just happen to have three of them.”

Now 17 and occupied with school, sports, and friends, she admits that it sometimes takes effort to gather opinions from three parents.

“But the big picture is: You just have more people there to support you and be there for you and love you no matter what,” she says. “Honestly, I look up to all of them.”

And so, one October day, she and her family gathered in a Bay Area court for Bianchi to adopt her as a third parent.

“Do you understand what this means?” Bianchi recalls the judge asking.

Without any doubt, she said yes.