The Court of Appeal of Alberta has ruled that a contract releasing a man from parental rights and obligations towards his partner's child would not be valid. The Court ruled that while the man was not the child's biological father, he had entered into a relationship of interdependence of some permanence with the child's mother and thus also with her child who lived in their shared household. While he had no intention of being a parent to the child, the law makes him responsible to support the child after a separation.