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After spending three years together and participating in a commitment ceremony, T.F. and B.L. agreed to have a child.  Together, the parties selected an anonymous donor, shared the insemination and prenatal care expenses, and signed the clinic’s requisite insemination consent form.  T.F. became pregnant on the second insemination attempt.  Despite their relationship’s deterioration in the months following the news of T.F.’s pregnancy, B.L. verbalized her continuous commitment to parent and support the child she agreed to conceive.  Soon after the child was born, B.L. sent a letter to T.F. indicating her desire to cut off all future contact with T.F. and the baby.

In August of 2004, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that to the extent T.F. and B.L. entered into an agreement, express or implied, to co-parent the child, the agreement was unenforceable because “‘parenthood by contract’ is not the law in Massachusetts.”  The dissent, however, argued that even though Massachusetts does not recognize parenthood by contract, the agreement in this case included an implied promise of support, which is enforceable.  Justice Greaney therefore concluded, “[a] person cannot participate, in the way the defendant did, in bringing a child into the world, and then walk away from a support obligation” . . . .