Matters of the Law

I began to poke around when DW was pregnant initially over the summer about how the birth certificates in VA were laid out and whether or not same-sex second parent adoption had ever happened here before, if it was strictly prohibited, or just never done.

As suspected, VA is incredibly slow to come around to all things LGBT friendly and the birth certificate explicitly states MOTHER and FATHER rather than Parent 1 and Parent 2, as some of the other more progressive states (like MA) have done.  And I found nothing on the world wide web indicating same sex second parent adoption had ever been attempted.

So recently I sought out LBGT friendly attorneys in the area, and thanks to Lambda Legal, I found one pretty quickly.  We had a consultation over the phone Friday night and learned about our options:

Confirmed that same-sex second parent adoption has never been done here, however, we learned that there have been several successful cases in which this particular attorney had been instrumental in, awarding joint custody arrangements to same sex couples.  I forgot what she called it exactly but it was nice to know we had an option to consider.   She would represent DW and I would go sans attorney and basically we would petition the court for joint custody proving that I had a legitimate interest in the child's life.

This could then carry from state to state should we move out of VA, just like any other court ordered custodial arrangement would.  We could also petition the court pretty easily in the next state (if they were more LGBT friendly) and obtain a second parent adoption pretty easily by attaching this existing joint custodial order (along with our marriage license fro MA) to the petition.

When I looked into the process of obtaining a birth certificate in VA, I discovered that its all through the mail and no identification of gender or identity for that matter is required, so why not just list myself as "Father"???  Don't think I'm not seriously considering it...  If this is a no go though, it will be just DW's name on the birth certificate unless a) VA wakes the fuck up and changes their law/form or b) we move to a state where its GLBT friendly and we can request an amendment to the birth certificate.

The name game is still up for discussion, our names that is.  (We aren't sharing our baby names in advance - we will simply present and introduce our LO when he/she arrives - think Lion King - LMAO) But we had initially discussed changing our last names in advance so when the baby arrives we would be more unified in a family name.  There are some caveats to this of course:

1.  My DS has his fathers  last name and therefore will always have a different last name than us (I grew up the same way, had my father's last name and my mother got remarried and had 2 more kids so they all shared a family name and I did not)

2.  DW and I can't yet agree on what this will look like - we talked about hyphenating our two last names and/or using both last names without a hyphen.  We know someone who did this with their kids and this allows them to use whatever last name they choose later in life.  We talked about using one last name as a middle name as well.  Lastly, we talked about creating a whole new name for our family (like our friends in SOHO) but we still haven't figured out what we want to do

3.  Neither one of us truly wants to change our name to anything else - after 33 years with them we are attached.  I also recognize the hassle it represents professionally now and its just a pain in the ass.

So obviously this means we aren't sure how this will affect the naming of the unborn child but thought I'd toss it out there in case anyone has any bright ideas for us to consider.  The attorney seemed to like the idea of changing or names in advance of the baby arriving-that this would avoid any potential guff about the baby's name on the gift certificate.

Attorney also strongly suggested we get our wills in order, along with our POA - she offered us a reduced rate because she enjoys working on GLBT issues, so all in the process will be pretty reasonable in terms of fees.


I'll post again this week as DW approaches the 12 week mark and we have our next ultrasound on Friday the 11th - trimester #2 starts on Valentine's Day....