## Facts

- Helmi A. Hisserich and her domestic partner, Tori Patterson, decided to have a child together.
- Patterson became pregnant through artificial insemination and gave birth to the child.
- During the relationship, Hisserich and Patterson shared parenting responsibilities and held themselves out as the child’s parents.
- Hisserich provided financial support for both the child and Patterson.
- At the time, California did not allow the couple to marry, but they registered their domestic partnership with their county.
- Hisserich did not legally adopt the child at any time.
- On her 1997 California income tax return, Hisserich claimed head-of-household filing status and listed the child as her dependent.
- On the return, Hisserich signed under penalty of perjury that the child lived with her and that she was financially responsible for the child.
- The California Franchise Tax Board denied head-of-household status on the basis that Hisserich was unmarried and not the child’s natural (biological) parent, and the FTB revised her return accordingly.
- Hisserich appealed the FTB’s determination to the California State Board of Equalization.

## Issues

1. Whether, for 1997 California personal income tax purposes, a taxpayer in a registered same-sex domestic partnership who did not adopt her partner’s child may treat the child as her “son or daughter” (and thus a qualifying child) to claim head-of-household filing status.
2. Whether shared parenting, financial support, and domestic partnership registration can substitute for legally recognized parent-child status when applying the “child/son or daughter” requirement incorporated from the Internal Revenue Code.

## Decision

- The State Board of Equalization sustained the Franchise Tax Board’s denial of head-of-household filing status for 1997.
- The Board determined that, because Hisserich was neither the child’s biological parent nor an adoptive parent (and was not married to the child’s birth mother), the child could not be treated as Hisserich’s “son or daughter” for the dependency and head-of-household rules applied to the 1997 return.
- The Board left any expansion of eligibility based on domestic partnership or non-adoptive co-parent status to changes in governing law, rather than administrative interpretation.

## Legal Principles

- California personal income tax law generally incorporates relevant Internal Revenue Code definitions for dependency and head-of-household determinations unless California law provides a different rule.
- For head-of-household status, the taxpayer generally must maintain a household for a qualifying person, commonly a qualifying child who meets relationship requirements (such as being the taxpayer’s “son or daughter” within the incorporated definitions).
- A non-biological partner who has not adopted the child, and who is not the child’s stepparent through marriage to the child’s legal parent, does not satisfy the “son or daughter” relationship requirement as applied to the 1997 tax year.
- Financial support and day-to-day parenting, without legally recognized parentage (e.g., adoption or another legally recognized parent-child status), are not enough to create the required relationship for head-of-household treatment under the incorporated tax definitions.

## Conclusion

The Board upheld the FTB’s determination that Hisserich could not claim head-of-household status for 1997 because, despite functioning as a parent and supporting the household, she lacked legally recognized parent status (such as biological parentage or adoption) required to treat her domestic partner’s child as her “son or daughter” for the applicable dependency and head-of-household rules.


In the Matter of the Appeal of Helmi A. Hisserich, No. 99A-0341, Case No. 89002469560 (2000)