Glover v. Junior, 2025 Pa. LEXIS 390 (Pa. Super. Ct., March 20, 2025) (Dougherty, J.)
JUSTICE DOUGHERTY
Our law in this Commonwealth presently recognizes four pathways to establish legal parentage: biology, adoption, equity (i.e., parentage by a marital presumption or estoppel), and contract where a child is born using Assistive Reproductive Technology (ART). As we explain below, none of these existing paths applies to the facts of this case, which involves a married same-sex couple who conceived a child using a sperm donor and ART but did not enter into a contract and separated before the child was born. We believe the time has come for our law to embrace a fifth pathway to parentage to account for the situation at hand. We thus adopt the doctrine of intent-based parentage into our common law and affirm the Superior Court en banc to the extent it found parentage was established under that theory.
We adopt the doctrine of intent-based parentage into our common law, and we affirm the Superior Court’s decision Junior is Child’s legal parent based on that ground only. Chief Justice Todd and Justices Donohue and Wecht join the opinion. Justice Brobson files a concurring opinion in which Justice Mundy joins. Justice McCaffery did not participate in the consideration or decision of this matter.
