CLE Webinar: Are You My Mother/Father? Parentage in Modern Times

May 25, 2022

12:00-1:00 PM via Zoom

"Are You My Mother/Father? Parentage in Modern Times"

Presenter Linda Elrod

Parentage traditionally has been based upon biology (mother giving birth) or the presumption that the mother’s husband was the father of the child born to a marriage. Today with 40% of children born out of wedlock and the use of assisted reproductive technologies, the answers have become complicated. Same-sex marriage, gender-neutral readings of old laws, and voluntary acknowledgements of parentage have led to expanded definitions of parentage. The Uniform Parentage Act 2017 adds de facto parentage as a presumption. Other states use the doctrines of equitable estoppel and in loco parentis. The patchwork of laws governing parentage create uncertainties as to whether a presumed parent in one state will be recognized as a parent in another state.

Linda D. Elrod is the Richard S. Righter Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Washburn University School of Law Children and Family Law Center. She served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist at the Dublin Institute of Technology in 2011.

Professor Elrod is past chair of the American Bar Association Family Law Section; has served on the ABA Family Law Section Council since 1988; served as co-chair of the ABA Child Custody and Adoption Pro Bono Advisory Board; and has been Editor of the Family Law Quarterly since 1992. She is currently the reporter to draft a Family Law Arbitration Act for the Uniform Law Commission. Professor Elrod was the Reporter for the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act (UCAPA) now enacted in twelve states and sits on the Joint Editorial Board on Family Law for the Uniform Law Commission. She is on the U.S. State Department Advisory Committee on Private International Law. Professor Elrod was an official observer for the International Society of Family Law to the 21st Diplomatic Session of the Hague Convention on Private International Law which drafted the Hague Convention on International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance. Professor Elrod is the author of a national family law treatise, Child Custody Practice and Procedure; a state family law treatise, Kansas Family Law and Practice; and co-author of a family law textbook, Family Law: Cases Comments and Questions, that has been used in 35 law schools. In 2000 she coordinated an international, interdisciplinary think tank on "High Conflict Custody Cases Reforming the System for Children." Professor Elrod has written dozens of articles and is a frequent CLE speaker.