Adopting Ryan
By Liz Seaton, HRC's Deputy Field Director
I just adopted my 6-month-old daughter, Ryan, and became her legal second parent. Ryan's other parent is my longtime partner and my daughter's biological mother, whom friends affectionately call Dr. Pat. As an attorney and deputy field director for the Human Rights Campaign, I have a fair amount of experience with second-parent adoptions. I have helped other lesbian and gay couples adopt children and advocated on behalf of the right of all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples to do so. My career, in short, is focused on helping individuals and families do all they can to legally protect themselves.
But on the day the judge granted my adoption of Ryan, it didn't feel like a gay rights victory. Rather, my overwhelming emotion was a sense of relief that she now has far greater legal and financial protections than the day before the judge signed the adoption order.
If she hurts herself on the playground now and needs to go the emergency room, I don't need to search for my medical power of attorney form before I can legally sign for her medical care. If something happens to me, there will be no question that she is my next of kin and heir. She can inherit under my will and life insurance policies and collect Social Security survivor's benefits like other children. And if my partner and I break up, she will have access to what our legal system has developed as a vital means of protecting families in such situations: mandatory child support and court-ordered joint custody or visitation.
Nationwide, each state has its own adoption laws and they vary widely. In three states - Florida, Mississippi and Utah - gay and lesbian people are barred by statute from adopting. In other states - such as California, New Jersey and New York - the law just as clearly forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation. And in still other states, adoption laws fail to address sexual orientation at all, leaving the question of whether a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person can adopt up to an interpretation of case law and, very often, the judge who hears the case.
In Maryland, where I live, access to second-parent adoptions is built upon a legal foundation provided by two cases that had nothing to do with gay and lesbian parents. One involved two sisters who were allowed to jointly adopt, and the other involved a biological father who was permitted to adopt his son even though he was not married to the boy's mother.
Maryland is also one of the states where the question of whether you can adopt may depend upon the judge who happens to hear your case. Because of my experiences in this field, I happen to know which judges have granted second-parent adoptions here and which might be more hostile, including one judge, now retired, who denied two second-parent adoptions to lesbian-headed families in a mean-spirited move and as one of his last acts on the bench. (Thankfully, a different judge later granted the adoptions.)
But you don't - and shouldn't - need to be an attorney to adopt as a second parent. At the same time that I was in the courtroom adopting Ryan, there was another lesbian couple with two boys, ages 7 and 9. Like most people, neither mom knew much about state adoption laws or procedure. But the nonbiological mom's adoption sailed right through along with mine. The reason? That family did the same thing that Pat and I did: They hired an attorney with experience handling second-parent adoptions, and they let the attorney take the lead. Their responsibility was to help their attorney present their family strengths in the best possible light.
Some of things we did along those lines were important in and of themselves, and I'm glad the adoption proceedings pushed us to do them quickly. For example, Pat and I updated our wills, established a college savings account, increased the value of our life insurance policies and got other important documents in order.
Other things were just for the adoption. For example, we had a home study done, permitted a social worker to ask us intrusive questions and put together a photo album showing our lives together. It all helped contribute to the judge's ruling that we had presented clear and convincing evidence that to recognize me as Ryan's second legal parent was in her best interest.
I already sleep better at night knowing that Ryan has what she needs - because what Ryan needs is more than just the love that her mom and I give her and the protections we could have tried to patch together in the absence of a second-parent adoption. But there's just no substitute for the protection granted a child who has two legal parents, and Ryan needs and deserves those protections under law.