Mrs. Kramer Vs. Mrs. Kramer

The molestation charges, says Jenkins, are ridiculous. Her time with Isabella has not revealed any deep disturbances, just a few uncomfortable questions about a judge's ruling or where she'll spend the next holiday. Otherwise, she says, Isabella acts like any other kid her age, whether they're attending a pumpkin patch fair near her grandparents' home in Virginia or simply checking out books at the local library. "She doesn't look at me and go screaming the other way," says Jenkins, laughing. "She hugs me, calls me Mommy, and we have fun."

Jenkins grew up in Falls Church, Va., with three siblings and devout Catholic parents. She attended parochial school from kindergarten through 12th grade, though she begged her parents to go to a secular, public school. By 19, she was already contemplating marriage. "I was engaged to a man," says Jenkins. "I tried not to be this way, but I just couldn't live a lie. Coming out for me was hell." She began binge drinking, an addiction that intensified after her brother Ricky committed suicide when she was 22. Shortly thereafter, Jenkins joined AA, "cleaned her life up" and met her partner of the next 12 years, a woman who was a Republican fundraiser (Jenkins worked as an office manager for a local florist). Jenkins says the two split in 1997 because she wanted children and her partner did not. Three months later, she met the woman who would change her life forever.

Miller grew up a few miles away from Jenkins in Arlington, Va. Her parents divorced when she was 7, and she was left to live with her mother, whom Miller claims was a paranoid-schizophrenic. She says her mother sexually and physically abused her as a child and later, forbade her to date, telling her "men were evil." Miller turned to the local Baptist church for solace, spending every free hour attending Bible study, organizing fundraising events and proselytizing door-to-door. She enrolled at James Madison University, where she earned an undergraduate degree in psychology and met the man she would marry at age 22. Miller recalls she first began drinking with her husband, and after the couple split two years into the marriage, she began to drink more heavily. Miller became so depressed, she said, she tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists, and ended up in intensive care, where she was referred to a psychology ward. There, she said counselors suggested she may be homosexual. "They then funneled me into these gay-support groups, and I wasn't even sure if I was," she says, laughing. "I think I just wanted to belong to a group." Miller—who was working in the child-care field—met a woman whom she lived with for two years. Then, right after her mother's death in 1997, she met Jenkins.

Jenkins and Miller do agree on one thing—they were both on the rebound when they met that day in a Falls Church AA meeting. Miller, then 29, was mourning her mother's death while Jenkins, 33, was not yet over her former, longtime relationship. "Looking back now, I can see now that Lisa honed in on the one thing that was missing in my life, the thing I was willing to get into another relationship for—family and children," says Jenkins. But as Miller tells it, it was Jenkins who zeroed in on her vulnerable state. "I was sharing at a meeting about the way my mom died," recalls Miller. "She'd been dead for almost two weeks in her home, without anybody knowing, when I found her," says Miller. "It was horrible and I was in shock. After the meeting, Janet came up to me. From there on, it was a really fast relationship."

Within six months, Miller moved into Jenkins's home in Falls Church, and they later opened up their own child-care business. When same-sex unions became legal in Vermont in late 2000, they took the nine-and-a-half-hour car ride up to a resort in Stowe, where they were joined in a civil union on December 19. They honeymooned in the tropics. Soon after, they began trying for a baby. The couple decided that Miller would carry their baby since she liked the idea of "being big and pregnant." After nearly a year of tests and procedures, Miller finally became pregnant at an IVF clinic near their home with sperm from donor No. 2309, and Isabella Ruth Miller-Jenkins was born April 16, 2002. "It was just amazing," says Jenkins. "Everyone was there—my parents, our friends, everyone. We were all so happy."

The family soon moved to Vermont, where they bought a big house with plenty of room for more kids. But by the time they were trying for another child in the spring of 2003, things were deteriorating. Miller says Jenkins had become verbally and physically abusive, and wouldn't allow her to leave the house, while Jenkins says Miller became mentally unstable and reclusive, and refused to seek professional help. Both women deny the charges, and even disagree on what happened after the IVF treatments. Jenkins says Miller miscarried in the first trimester, while Miller insists she never was pregnant. Regardless, the two amicably split in 2003 after their failed attempt at a second child. Until that point, Miller says, she begged Jenkins to file adoption papers, because she didn't want Isabella to end up as a ward of the state if something happened to her. "I was told we didn't need to because we had the civil union," says Jenkins. "God, if I had only known."