BISMARCK — Unmarried couples cannot legally adopt a child together in North Dakota, the state's Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Friday, November 6, 2026. The decision slammed the door on a joint petition filed by a maternal grandmother and her longtime partner, who had raised her grandson since he was four months old.
Both biological parents had already signed formal consents surrendering their parental rights. The child, identified in court dockets as T.J.W.-H., lived under the couple's roof until age three. None of that swayed the bench. The law, the justices insisted, permits no shared parental decrees outside the bonds of legal marriage.
The verdict drew a sharp statutory line. Writing for the high court, Justice Douglas Bahr unpacked the rigid mechanics of Section 14-15-03 of the North Dakota Century Code. The statute recognizes only three categories of prospective adoptive parents: a husband and wife acting together, a stepparent adopting a spouse's child, or an "unmarried adult" filing alone.
Two cannot stand where the legislature wrote one.
"The absence of the word 'together' and of any limit on when and how many unmarried adults may adopt supports the conclusion the legislature intended section 14-15-03(2) to apply to one unmarried adult, not to two or more unmarried adults," Justice Bahr wrote. Chief Justice Lisa Fair McEvers, along with Justices Jerod E. Tufte and Jon J. Jensen, concurred without dissent.
North Dakota built its adoption framework upon the 1969 Uniform Adoption Act. While that model code extended joint adoption privileges to married couples, it withheld them from unmarried partners. Other jurisdictions — including Wyoming — subsequently rewrote their statutes to accommodate cohabiting couples. North Dakota lawmakers chose not to do so. The court made clear it would not step into that legislative vacuum.
"The legislature, not the judiciary, determines the public policy of who is eligible to adopt," the bench stated. Justice Bahr anchored the finding to precedent across the country, citing appellate rulings from Maine, Louisiana, and Wisconsin that similarly turned away unmarried cohabitants. The partners in this case, designated in court filings as D.W. and A.D., have lived together continuously since 2007. Yet decades of shared domestic life cannot substitute for a marriage license under the Century Code.
The ruling answers a direct question of law certified by the McKenzie County District Court: "Is an unmarried couple able to adopt a child pursuant to any provision of N.D.C.C. § 14-15-03?"
The answer was an unyielding no.
The decree does not, however, leave the child entirely adrift. The high court clarified that the statute leaves the door open for one caregiver to petition independently. Either the grandmother or her partner may file as an individual unmarried adult, but only one of them will hold enforceable legal parentage over T.J.W.-H.
The Supreme Court remanded the case to the McKenzie County District Court, which will now resume proceedings to decide whether to grant single-parent adoption rights to one of the two applicants.