You might think that Z. is my daughter because I birthed her.
But as of this day two years ago, you would be wrong.
Since then, legally, my basis for claiming Z. as my daughter is that I adopted her.
I never gave up parental rights, and in Philadelphia county you don't need a home visit for second-parent adoption, but we did both do criminal background checks. (I came across the receipt for mine a couple of months ago and for weeks I couldn't figure out why I'd needed one in 2005, a year I did not start any teaching jobs.) And we visited the prothonotary's* office for an interview that turned out to be mostly about our financial status.
However, A. and I were co-petitioners on her adoption papers, and her new birth certificate doesn't distinguish between us. We are each listed as parent.
It was such a relief to have it done. I hated being the only legal parent. I was completely irrational about Uncle Donor, who had been my friend for a decade. And I hated feeling grateful for something another family could take for granted: two legal parents. But I felt--and feel--grateful anyway.
* Proe-THON-uh-tarry. We have one of these when some other court system might have a clerk of courts. Dunno why. It's an old, old county in an old, old commonwealth.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
I still don't understand how that means you adopted her...if you were always the legal parent...
Happy adoption day!
Jo(e), thanks!
Lo, A. didn't apply to get added to the existing birth certificate all by herself. We were adopted her together. So my legal claim as birth parents was superseded by my legal claim as adoptive parent, because that is how adoption works. Z.'s original birth certificate became as though it never was. Scary when you think about it.
Fascinating. And congratulations!
Happy adoption day to all of you!
Though, just because I like spinning these things out, not because I can imagine circumstances under which it would have any possible practical application -- I wonder how it would work if someone in your situation decided to "de-adopt" her child, in other words, giving up the parental rights gained through adoption. Could that person revert to her claim as a birth parent or was that extinguished by the adoption?
Niobe, I immediately jumped to what a lesbian lawyer friend calls "Bitch-and-Victim" case law. This is generated when the parents split and biomom/Bitch tries to do nonbiomom/Victim not just out of custody but out of any parental standing whatsoever. Of course, the Bitch can only make this claim if she assumes her birthparent rights are intact "underneath" the adoption.
Luckily, the status of a legal adoption is extremely hard to assail. Usually cases only go to court if the Bitch can convince someone that there are shades of grey in the Victim's status.
(And of course the ethics of second-parent adoption are wildly different from the ethics of standard adoption. Just for the record.)
My husband's family calls his adoption day his "Happiness Day." I think that's very sweet.
I hope that same-sex 2nd parent adoptions continue to happen more frequently and widely. It's still awfully hard to get it done down here.
Furrow, welcome! And that is sweet.
That is a very strange system but happy adoption day in any case!
As I understand it, in the UK, it's just a form. If the donor (I prefer Z's "Donut") is anonymous, a child born into a civil partnership is understood to belong to both parents just as in marriage. But if the donor is known, there's the exact same form they use in the case of step-parents to make the nonbiomom (or Dad) the legal guardian and for the donor or surrogate to give up their rights and responsibilities.
I guess it's good for this stuff to be straight, but the less paperwork involved in family life the better.
Goldfish, in the US family law is administered state by state and even sometimes county by county --there was a lawsuit here in Pennsylvania in the early years of this decade because same-sex second-parent adoption was being permitted by family court judges in some counties but not in others. Lucky for us, the state supreme court decided it the right way.
In most other Pennsylvania counties, we would have needed a home study from a social worker, a process that can cost hundreds of dollars and evaluates the worthiness of what is already the baby's permanent home.
It is a byzantine and randomly complicated process whose outcome is predetermined...just a set of hoops. And yet I am grateful it was available to us.
Happy Adoption Day! And here's hoping for a future in which so many legal hoops aren't required to provide legal protection for our families. But for today, simply, congratuations!
Thanks, Susan--and yes, the process was vexing, but the outcome fantastic.
Post a Comment