Montana court redefines parenthood

Montana news:

The Montana Supreme Court just made it a whole lot harder to be a parent, and a whole lot easier to become one.
Let's review the travesty of Maniaci v. Kulstad, decided on a 6-1 vote in an opinion released on Oct. 6 (hereinafter known as Black Tuesday).
The court affirmed a Missoula District Court ruling by Judge Ed McLean that Michelle Kulstad had earned the right to be known as a parent to two children because she had "shacked up" with the children's adoptive mother during the time when they were adopted.
That's a crude way of saying they were living together, but don't be misled by any grandiloquent claims of "civil rights" that attach to this case because Kulstad and Barbara Maniaci were engaged in a homosexual partnership prior to their 2006 breakup. There is nothing "civil" about what the Supreme Court did, and nothing "right" about it either. ...

The Montana Supreme Court has thrown all that on its head. Because by awarding parental rights to Michelle Kulstad, they have in essence changed the playing field for all parents. From now on, it is not the state alone which will have the power to determine custody, but each and every parent. Every time a parent invites another adult into the home as a partner (even should no sexual relationship at all exist) there is a chance that the "partner" may eventually sue for custody of the children in the house.
There is certainly nothing stopping them from doing so because the Montana Supreme Court has ruled inexplicably that parental rights may be abridged or abrogated even with no finding of unfitness on the nominal parent's part. This completely reverses the constitutional principle which had prevailed in all previous Montana case law that "a natural parent cannot be denied custody of his or her child absent termination of that person's parental rights for abuse or neglect."

This is another attack on parental rights.