Family Law

Family Law

Victories

  • Ensuring that women and men in marriage-like relationships receive a fair and equitable division of pension benefits, even if they are unmarried.
    Owens v. Automotive Machinists Pension
  • Successfully urging the Montana Supreme Court, in the first case of its kind in the nation, to recognize that when a battered woman and her children have fled to another state, a court must consider domestic violence as a reason to let the court of the other state determine child custody issues.
    Stoneman v. Drollinger
  • Fighting for the rights of all couples to marry, without regard to sexual orientation.
    Andersen v. King County
  • Winning the first Washington State case that recognized a non-biological mother's right to parent her child.
    In re Parentage of L.B.
  • Successfully arguing that same-sex couples be accorded the same property division rules as other couples living in marital-like relationships.
    Vasquez v. Hawthorne; Gormley v. Robertson
  • Ensuring that frozen "pre-embryos" are not treated as children, and that decision-making about them does not depend on genetic connection.
    Litowitz v. Litowitz
  • Helping ensure that Montana law protects the rights of lesbian parents to maintain relationships with their non-biological children, and to ensure that lesbian and gay couples have the right to a fair and equitable division of their property when a relationship ends.
    Kulstad v. Maniaci
  • Forcing the University of Montana to provide domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples as well as to unmarried different-sex couples.
    Snetsinger v. University of Montana
  • Changing Washington law to protect a custodial parent's constitutional right to relocate with her children.
    For more information on your legal rights, see Moving With Children: Washington's Relocation Law.
  • Changing Washington law to ensure that children have the right to adequate post-high school financial support.
  • Educating grandparents and other kinship caregivers about their rights and how the legal system can help them.

For information on your legal rights, see Family Law.

Women's rights. Nothing less.

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