NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – A New York parent who sued in a bid to marry their adult child should have their case thrown out, city lawyers said in a legal filing this week.
The lawsuit, filed by an unnamed parent in Manhattan Federal Court back in the spring, seeks to overturn laws prohibiting the incestuous marriage. The parent’s suit argued that the “proposed spouses are adults” and “biological parent and child” who are “unable to procreate together.”
The parent said it’s an issue of “individual autonomy” and that they’d “sustain emotional harm” if they tried to tie the knot as a “Parent and Adult Child Non-Procreationable” couple under the current laws.
However, the city said in a July 23 legal response that the parent has no case since he or she “has not even put the question to the child, and does not allege that the child will answer in the affirmative.”
In court papers obtained by the New York Post, the city also said the suit was “a waste of the court’s resources” and that it’s “patently obvious” that “romantic and sexual relationships between parents and children and other first-degree relatives are destructive to children and families.”
City lawyers argued that the law against such marriages “reflects government’s interest in protecting children and family stability and freedom from undue or inappropriate relationships affected by power imbalance and other factors.”
Incest is a felony in New York state, while incestuous marriages are considered void and punishable by fines and jail time, according to the report. People looking to wed in the five boroughs have to declare there aren’t “legal impediments to the marriage.”
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