‘Unmarried partnerships or queer relationships’ make a family: SC

“Familial relationships may take the form of domestic, unmarried partnerships or queer relationships”, the Supreme Court has observed, while noting that an ”atypical” manifestation of a family unit is as real as its traditional counterpart and deserves protection under the law.The predominant understanding of the concept of a “family” both in the law and in society is that ”it consists of a single, unchanging unit with a mother and a father (who remain constant over time) and their children.“This assumption ignores both, the many circumstances which may lead to a change in one’s familial structure, and the fact that many families do not conform to this expectation to begin with. Familial relationships may take the form of domestic, unmarried partnerships or queer relationships,” a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna said in an order uploaded on Sunday.The observations are significant as activists have been raising the issue of recognising LGBT marriages and civil unions as well as allowing live-in couples to adopt after the apex court decriminalised homosexuality in 2018.The apex court made the remarks in its verdict that held that a working woman cannot be denied her statutory right to maternity leave for her biological child only because her husband has two children from a previous marriage and she had availed the leave to take care of one of them.The bench said that a household may be a single parent household for any number of reasons, including the death of a spouse, separation, or divorce.