CT HB05178

Establishes the Connecticut Parentage Act (86 new sections, 65 conforming amendments/repeals), effective January 1, 2021, governing all determinations of parentage regardless of a child's place of birth or residence, with equal treatment of parent-child relationships regardless of marital status, gender of parent, or circumstances of birth.

Recognizes eight ways to establish parentage: giving birth, marital/cohabitation presumption, de facto parentage adjudication, genetic testing adjudication (≥99% probability threshold), adoption, voluntary acknowledgment, consent to assisted reproduction, and surrogacy agreement — replacing the former paternity-focused framework.

Creates a voluntary acknowledgment process filed with the Department of Public Health with no filing fee, equivalent to a court adjudication, rescindable within 60 days, and challengeable thereafter only on grounds of fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact with the burden on the challenger and a best-interest-of-the-child standard.

Establishes presumed parentage for spouses during marriage or within 300 days of marriage termination, and for persons who reside with and hold out a child as their own for at least 2 years, with the presumption overcomeable only by court order and generally not after the child turns 2.

Permits adjudication of de facto parentage by clear and convincing evidence where a person has resided with and cared for a child for at least 1 year, formed a bonded parental relationship fostered by an existing parent, without disestablishing any other parent — and allows courts to adjudicate more than two parents when failure to do so would be detrimental to the child.

Governs assisted reproduction by establishing that donors are not parents, that persons who consent to assisted reproduction with intent to parent are legal parents (consent provable by clear and convincing evidence even without a signed record), and provides rules for withdrawal of consent before embryo transfer and posthumous parentage (embryo in utero within 1 year of death with written authorization).

Creates a comprehensive surrogacy framework requiring participants be age 21+ with independent legal counsel, mental health evaluations, and medical evaluations for surrogates; distinguishes between gestational surrogacy (parentage by operation of law at birth) and genetic surrogacy (requiring court validation before assisted reproduction); guarantees the surrogate's autonomy over all health and medical decisions including pregnancy.

Requires gamete banks and fertility clinics to collect donor identifying information and medical history for gametes collected on or after January 1, 2021, and allows donor-conceived individuals at age 18 to request donor identity (subject to donor's disclosure election) and medical history regardless of disclosure preference.

Assigns jurisdiction to Superior Court by default, with Probate Court handling parentage orders for assisted reproduction, surrogacy agreements, and alleged genetic parent claims, and Family Support Magistrate Division handling IV-D support cases; eliminates the right to jury trial, sets an 18th birthday filing deadline, and limits retroactive support liability to 3 years.

Modernizes terminology across dozens of existing Connecticut statutes, replacing "paternity" with "parentage," "father/mother" with "parent/birth parent," "putative father" with "alleged genetic parent," and "born out of wedlock" with "born to an unmarried birth parent," while repealing former artificial insemination statutes (§§ 45a-771 to 45a-776) and certain paternity provisions (§§ 46b-166, 46b-167).