North Dakota adoption ruling: unmarried couples cannot jointly adopt, court says

The North Dakota Supreme Court ruled on Friday, 6 November 2026, that the state's adoption law does not allow two unmarried adults to adopt a child together. The decision, Adoption of T.J.W.-H. (2026 ND 195), was written by Justice Douglas Bahr. It answered a legal question sent up by the McKenzie County District Court in a case brought by a grandmother and her partner, who have cared for her grandson since he was four months old and wanted to adopt him jointly. Both of the boy's biological parents had agreed to the adoption. The court held that the statute, section 14-15-03 of the North Dakota Century Code, does not authorise such a joint adoption, and said that deciding who may adopt is a matter for the state legislature.

Adoption is how the law turns a caring relationship into a legal parent-child relationship. When two people raise a child together but only one of them can become the legal parent, the other remains, in law, outside that relationship, even if they share the daily work of bringing the child up.

The case shows how family life has moved ahead of older laws. Grandparents raising grandchildren, and couples who live together without marrying, are both familiar arrangements. Here the boy's birth parents agreed, the grandmother and her partner had cared for him almost since birth, and still the law, as the court read it, did not let both of them adopt him together.

The ruling also ends uncertainty inside North Dakota. Until now, different district courts had reached different answers on the same question, with some allowing joint adoptions by unmarried couples. In an earlier case, a judge in Cass County denied an adoption for an unmarried Fargo couple under the same law, but the state Supreme Court did not decide that matter because the couple dismissed their case. This time the question came to the court directly, so the answer now binds every court in the state.

The court's message was that it was not judging the family. It said the legislature, not the courts, sets the policy on who may adopt. That leaves any change in the hands of lawmakers.

For readers elsewhere, including in India, the case is a reminder that the right to adopt is defined by each country's or state's law, and that the same caring arrangement can be treated very differently from one legal system to the next.

Peepals timeline: In an earlier case, a district judge in Cass County denied an adoption to an unmarried Fargo couple under North Dakota law; the couple dropped the case, so the state Supreme Court never ruled. Later, the McKenzie County District Court, faced with the grandmother's joint petition and aware that district courts disagreed, sent the question to the Supreme Court. On 6 November 2026 the Supreme Court answered it: the law does not allow unmarried couples to adopt jointly.

Short-term: The grandmother and her partner cannot jointly adopt the boy under the current law. District courts across North Dakota must now refuse joint adoption petitions from unmarried couples.

Long-term: Any change would have to come from the North Dakota legislature. Families where two unmarried adults raise a child, including grandparents and their partners, will be watching whether lawmakers take up the question.

Who is affected: Unmarried couples in North Dakota hoping to adopt together, grandparents and other relatives raising children, the children in their care, and family lawyers and courts in the state.

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