Daley Zucker represents clients in landmark Pennsylvania child custody caseJanuary 21, 2010
In a decision that overturns 25 years of case law, the Pennsylvania Superior Court has abolished the long-standing presumption that child custody should be awarded to a heterosexual parent rather than to a parent involved in a homosexual relationship. “This decision will have reverberations throughout our courts and, perhaps, even the pages of history. It ends an era of Court-sanctioned discrimination in child custody cases and restores the focus of the courts on the best interests of the child,” says attorney Kathleen Misturak-Gingrich, of the Harrisburg-based law firm of Daley Zucker Meilton & Miner LLC, who represented the mother and successfully argued the case before the Superior Court. The decision, in M.A.T. v. G.S.T., was filed January 21, 2010.
Before the ruling, Pennsylvania courts had, since 1985, required a homosexual parent seeking child custody to prove “that exposure to the homosexual relationship has no adverse effect on a child if exposed to that relationship,” a standard established by the Pennsylvania Superior Court in the case of Constant A. v. Paul C.A.
