Two Loving Fathers
By Jeff McElroy
When Enrique and I decided to adopt in 1997, he was manageably HIV positive. We had been together seven years, had built our dream house and wanted children to complete our family.
After one year of preparation, we were matched with a 3-year-old boy in March 1998. Raul, our son, had only known foster care in the Los Angeles County system for his first three years. He spent his fourth year of life with us in foster care/adoption placement and all went well. Our attorney filed the papers to make the adoption final in December 1998. We asked him to file a co-parent adoption, but he recommended against it. The California governor at the time, Pete Wilson, had instructed all state child welfare agencies to oppose two-parent adoptions and the adoption judge in Los Angeles was not granting them as a matter of course. We agreed, instead, that I would be the adopting parent and that Enrique would adopt later in a second-parent adoption.
Two things happened in January 1999, a month before our hearing date that would be critical to our son's future and the future of our family. Enrique was diagnosed with cancer -- an aggressive, stage-four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma secondary to his HIV infection. And Gray Davis became governor of California. As governor, Davis reversed Wilson's position. No longer were state adoption officials required to oppose two-parent same-sex adoptions. The February date for our adoption hearing was only days away. Enrique's mother was visiting from Caracas and would be at the hearing. It didn't feel right for me to be adopting our son by myself. I wrote a letter to the judge the day before the hearing asking that he consider a same-sex co-parent adoption. Our attorney amended our petition asking for a co-parent adoption in the event that the judge would agree.
As the cases were called that morning, the judge set ours aside to the end of the docket so that he could hear further arguments. I came prepared with a memo that supportive county adoption workers had provided to me from the governor's office reversing the state's position on the issue. The judge granted our amended position making us both parents of Raul on the same day.
Just 10 months later, Enrique died from the cancer. Though he had served as a parent to Raul for only two years, the strength of his character had a strong impact on his child, which will be a lasting legacy. Nearly 5, Raul understood what it meant to have two loving fathers and understood what a strong, loving and caring person his daddy Enrique was. He grew close to his Venezuelan grandparents and remains so to this day.
Beyond the emotional and nurturing issues, Raul will benefit financially from having Enrique as a father. As Enrique's son, he receives Social Security survivor benefits. Those benefits have enabled Raul to remain in a quality private school. The benefits will provide for Raul's education until he is an adult. Raul also has inheritance rights as Enrique's legal son. Ultimately, when family assets are distributed from Enrique's parents' estate, Raul will stand in Enrique's place, as Enrique's heir.
Were it not for a timely change in state policy and a sympathetic judge, Enrique would never have become Raul's father, for he would not have lived long enough to secure a second-parent adoption.
Rather than making our family suffer under an unfair legal fiction that denied our family bonds, the court, in our case, formed the family, as it should have. And it was a family with two loving parents and their adopted son. Beyond the financial impact this result will have on my son, it made it easier for me as the surviving parent to carry on with the family the adoption created. Denied marriage, Enrique and I will be forever united as the parents of Raul. It says so on his birth certificate.
Without the court affirming what was true, upon Enrique's death there would only have been Raul and I. As a result of the co-parent adoption, there is now a family to maintain. It has made it somehow easier on me, the surviving spouse.
I am an attorney and have shifted my practice to the area of adoptions. I have had the opportunity to appear before our judge since and have told him the impact that his decision made in our case. I am pleased to say that he now grants co-parent adoptions routinely.
Sept. 16, 2002