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• My partner and I are breaking up; do I have any rights to her child?

My partner and I are breaking up; do I have any rights to her child?

Unfortunately, loving and raising a child is not enough to establish legal rights. You must be the biological or adoptive parent of a child to have legal rights to timesharing and determining how his or her child is raised.

• We encourage those in a family relationship with another adult and a minor child, who is not legally their child, to go through the channels to officially adopt the child.

• Some states consider the "psychological parent" construct. The court may grant parental rights to a third party (i.e. "psychological parent") if the family has lived together and the child thinks of that third party as a parent.

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