New POMS On Child Relationships

     There's a new POMS (Program Operations Manual Series) issuance from Social Security updating the agency's policies on child relationships and dependence. It covers issues like children of same sex marriages, in vitro fertilization, posthumously conceived children and surrogacy. This area of the law has always been complicated because outdated state law must be applied in many cases and because things often get messy when human sexuality is involved. The advent of same sex marriages and advances in reproductive technology have made things far more complicated. There's also the problem that the statutes were written a long time ago and may not have been well written even at the time. For example, posthumous out of wedlock children were certainly known when these statutes were written but the Social Security Act doesn't talk about how the agency should deal with those cases other than referring to state laws, which are themselves problematic.