Judge declares polyamorous trio all legal parents of child

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — In what is believed to be a legal first in Canada, a court in Newfoundland and Labrador has recognized three unmarried adults as the legal parents of a child born within their polyamorous family.

Polyamorous relationships are legal in Canada, unlike bigamy and polygamy, which involve people in two or more marriages. In this case, the St. John’s family includes two men in a relationship with the mother of a child born in 2017.

“Society is continuously changing and family structures are changing along with it,” says the decision, by Justice Robert Fowler of the Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court’s family division.

“This must be recognized as a reality and not as a detriment to the best interests of the child.”

The April 4 decision says the unconventional family has been together for three years, but the biological father of the child is unknown. The family members are not identified in the decision, which was released Thursday by the court.

It’s not the first time a Canadian court has recognized that a family can have three legally recognized parents. In 2007, for example, the Ontario Court of Appeal recognized two women in relationship as the mothers of a child whose biological father was already deemed a legal parent. But the three adults in that case were not in a relationship.

The three people in the Newfoundland case turned to the courts after the province said only two parents could be listed on the child’s birth certificate. Lawyers for the province’s attorney general argued that the provincial Children’s Law Act does not allow for more than two people to be named as the legal parents of a child.

The lawyer for the family, Tracy Bannier, said the law has not kept up with changes in Canadian society.

“It wasn’t that the legislation was specifically prohibiting any child from having more than two parents,” she said. “It’s just that the legislators at the time simply didn’t consider a family structure with more than two parents. Because it didn’t prohibit it, there was a gap in the legislation.”