Parent Adoption – Is it Right for Your family?

The “parent adoption” process is also referred to as Second Parent or Step Parent Adoption. Here is what you need and what you need to know!

When one partner or spouse in a relationship adopts the biological child of their parent or spouse that is referred to as a “Parent Adoption.” If the parties are unmarried, it is called a Second Parent Adoption.  When the parties are married, it is called a Step Parent Adoption.  While gay couples across the country enjoy equal marriage rights, the laws for New York State adoption are still muddled, and it’s advisable for most same-sex couples to petition for a second or step parent adoption to build that legal relationship between non biological parent and child. If there is another biological parent involved, or if a couple uses a known sperm donor, their consent will be required for the adoption to move forward.  If, however, the child is the product of an anonymous sperm donation, then no consent is required.2nd parent adoption, second parent adoption, second parent adoptions, second parent adoption new york

New York State Adoption Step by Step

In a nutshell, you need to compile a lot of paperwork and have a good family lawyer, preferably one that specializes in adoptions for same-sex couples. Here is a rundown of what you will need:

  • The completed intake from your attorney. This is a general questionnaire that includes information for both parents and the child.
  • The original birth certificate for the child. A copy will not suffice. You will, however, get a new original birth certificate after the adoption which will add the name of the adoptive parent if it is not already on the original birth certificate.
  • A letter from the employer of the petitioning parent, and in some counties the biological parent, stating their position and salary. If you are not currently employed, they will need your last year’s tax returns.
  • A letter from the doctor of both parents stating that they are in general good health.
  • A letter from the child’s pediatrician stating that he or she is in general good health.
  • A completed form 1-D (a more elaborate medical assessment) by the child’s pediatrician
  • In cases of a surrogacy, you will need copies of your carrier and donor agreement.
  • In cases of artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, a letter verifying insemination.
  • If married, a copy of your marriage license.
  • Previous divorce decrees if either parent has been previously married.
  • If either parent has ever been arrested or convicted of a crime, the details and disposition records for any offense must be submitted.
  • A list of every residence the petitioning parent has lived at for the past 28 years, including months and years associated with every address.
  • Financial information, including the value of your home, any owned real estate, stocks and bonds, life insurance information and any sources of income other than employment.
  • The petitioning parent must be fingerprinted for a criminal background check
  • A home study, which is generally arranged for once your lawyer has been retained.

Keep in mind that this process may vary slightly from state to state and county to county, so it’s important to find an attorney familiar with the legal details in your specific location. While the New York State parent adoption process may seem harrowing, keep in mind that your adoption attorney is there to help you, advise you and even help keep you organized every step of the way.  Read more about the process here.

Anthony M. Brown, head of Nontraditional Family and Estates division of Albert W. Chianese & Associations, has extensive experience in helping same-sex couples through the adoption process, having gone through the process himself. If you have yet to create a legal relationship with your child or children, call 212-953-6447 or email Anthony at Anthony@timeforfamilies.com.

in Adoption / Featured Articles / Known Donor / Legal / Second Parent Adoption / Step Parent Adoption / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 1 comments

Why You Should Always Meet Your Gestational Carrier In Person

 Meeting your gestational carrier is a required component of the matching process. We are, after all, human beings with emotions and body language and senses and intuition.

It almost sounds a little silly as I type out those words, and I’m the one writing them.  What gives? Who doesn’t meet their gestational carrier, you might wonder.

Believe it or not, it happens.

In my early days of surrogacy, I belonged to several online support groups with surrogates and intended mothers from across the country.  Although the majority of the experiences the women brought to the group were positive, there were a few hair-raising ones as well.

One particularly unfortunate story involved an experienced surrogate carrying for a couple that maintained homes in the United States and Europe. They had an independent agreement (meaning they didn’t use an agency to find one another or negotiate their contract) and they used a US fertility center. They used donor eggs and the intended father’s sperm, and the surrogate was pregnant with their baby girl.

Throughout the contract agreement phase and the entire pregnancy, the surrogate spoke only with the intended father by phone. He told her that his wife spoke little English and they were overseas, so she had no contact with her intended mother.

When she delivered the baby, the intended father didn’t come to the birth. Within a day or so of giving birth, he revealed to her that his wife was never aware of the pregnancy and did not want the child, and therefore he didn’t want the baby either.

Shocking, right?!?

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All’s well that ends well (in theory, at least) – the surrogate was able to get temporary guardianship of the baby and placed her with adoptive parents, who no doubt were elated.   But the guy who orchestrated the pregnancy and his unsuspecting wife? Clearly all sorts of crazy.

It turns out that the surrogate never met either of the parents (and this was long before the days of Facetime or video conference calls). She’d only spoken with the intended father on the phone, and nothing more. Granted, in no way, shape or form did she deserve this to happen to her, but I have to wonder if the situation could have been avoided had she insisted on meeting both parents prior to agreeing to carry for them.

And if you follow the news, you probably already know about an unfortunate surrogacy case currently happening in California, where a gestational carrier is pregnant with triplets for a single father. He wanted to reduce the pregnancy, which she refused to do, and now it’s in question whether he wants any of the babies  at all (though they’re all his).

a face-to-face meeting is a required component of the matching process. We are, after all, human beings with emotions and body language and senses and intuition

As it turns out, she agreed to carry for him and became pregnant with his children without ever meeting him, or ever speaking with him for that matter (he is deaf, but still, there are mechanisms for people who are hearing impaired to communicate by phone, and of course there’s email).

by Susan Fuller – March 11, 2016 Surrogacy by Design

Click here to read the entire article.

in Ethics / Recently Added / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

In America: ‘Gary and Tony Have a Baby’

In America: Gary and Tony Have a Baby aired on CNN five years ago.  It is hard to imagine that so much time has passed, and I am honored that the story of my family was shared with so many people.

 

The documentary represents the face of my new initiative, In America with Soledad O’Brien. The idea is to do in-depth stories about communities whose voices often get lost in the cacophony of daily newsgathering. The concept was born with Black in America about 2 years ago as a 2 day, 4-hour documentary surveying the black community. We had trouble representing everyone because the community was so vast. So we are now on Black in America 3. With “In America: Gary and Tony Have a Baby,” we are trying out a new concept. That documentary is a one-hour tightly focused look at the journey of two people, a way for viewers to watch a human drama unfold organically rather than experience communities as issues or topics of debate. It is part of a larger Gay in America initiative that includes stories about black lesbians marrying in their Washington church, gay teens in Mississippi trying to stem violence in their schools and Atlanta gay families talking about how they had their children.

Tony, and his partner, Gary Spino, would sound very much like any couple if it wasn’t for the obstacles they face. They have spent a small fortune on lawyers and social workers and doctors trying to make their family. Their son is the product of Gary’s sperm and an egg donated by a woman they met through an agency. A surrogate carried the baby. They went to court to do a second-parent adoption which makes Tony the legal second parent of Gary’s biological son. Since they are two men, they cannot get married in the U.S. So they now both have a legal relationship to their son but no relationship to each other in the eyes of the federal government. This is the face of Gay in America today.

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Anthony & Family

Tony and I are in LA to do a premiere screening of the documentary. The Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has gathered about a hundred members of its community to see what we’ve produced. The discussion moves quickly past the story of these two men, which is exactly what we want. Jarrett Barrios, GLAAD’s director, talks about how he came out many years ago, fought for and won the right to have a state marriage in Massachusetts where he lives. He thought he’d made his world a more welcoming place. What he didn’t count on was that his adopted teenage sons would have to fight the same battle all over again, even though they are not gay. One of his sons recently started dating but didn’t want to bring his girlfriend home to meet his fathers. He realized that his son had to come out just like he had. He had the discomfort of revealing he has gay parents.

 

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Gay Family Planning: Options For Your Family

For thousands of New York couples each year gay family planning is a daunting and intricate process. If you are part of a same sex couple, there are extra complications as you must decide what route to go down in order to have or adopt a child.

Gay family planning options include adoption, a surrogate NYC carrier, pregnancy by donated sperm, or IVF. Here we cover the basics for each of these options to help you consider the right option for your family:

Adoption

There are over 130 adoption agencies in New York State, and each of the 58 social services unit districts has an adoption unit. There are no fees for adopting children who have special needs or are in custody of the local social services commissioner, although there may be fees for adopting those children in the legal guardianship of local voluntary agencies. The fees are based on the adoptive family’s income, however, and help may be available in the form of grants or fee waivers, so don’t let finances put you off from looking into this as an option to start your family.

gay adoption

After deciding on an agency, the application forms must be completed. Information is taken about your current family, your background and the type of child you feel you would be able to give the best life to. Criminal history checks will also be made, with particular attention paid to whether someone in the prospective adoptive family’s home has previous mistreated or neglected a child. A criminal record does not necessarily mean that you will be refused for adoption, as it depends on several factors including the type of crime committed.

Within four months of submitting the application, a home study is started and carried out on the prospective adoptive family. This is a series of meetings, training sessions and interviews that enables the family and social services to ascertain the readiness of the family to adopt, and any issues that they may need help with. After the home study has been completed the caseworker writes a summary about the family, which the adoptive couple can also add comments to. Training is also required to cover some areas that are specific to adoptive parenting, such as the needs of foster children and what kind of child they would be most suited to as a parent.

Once the study and summary are complete, the work then begins to match the family with a child. There is no set process for this as it is individual according to the child’s situation and needs. The Family Adoption Registry provides information about waiting children, and adoptive parents can ask for more information about children they are interested in, in exchange for a copy of the home study. The process goes from there and hopefully ends with a child or children finding a loving home with their new parents!

Pregnancy via sperm donor

Lesbian couples have many options in their own gay family planning. Sperm donors may be someone known to the couple or, alternatively, screened samples from a sperm bank. Donors can be anonymous or known, and even with anonymous donors there is usually information available about the donor’s height, hair colour, eye colour, education level and nationality. Ensuring that you use an approved fertility clinic is essential in order to avoid potential diseases that can be transferred through sperm. If you are using a known donor, insist on having him medically pre-screened before insemination and it is a very good idea to consult with an attorney familiar with known sperm donation.

Traditional Surrogate

gay surrogacy

Traditional surrogacy involves the sperm of the intended ‘adoptive’ parent fertilizing the egg of the traditional surrogate, so the child will be biologically related to both parties. Surrogacy contracts in NYC are not legally binding as they are declared ‘contrary to public policy’. This means that you cannot pay someone to carry a baby for you, or create a contract that mandates that the traditional surrogate mother has to give the child to the intended parents, (IPs) upon delivery. Surrogates, whether traditional or gestational, cannot accept money apart from expenses and medical fees directly related to the pregnancy, and heavy fines are levied for anyone involved in a surrogacy agreement – $500 for those involved and up to $10,000 for anyone found to be arranging such contracts (which are void and unenforceable in NYC).

Despite this, surrogacy has continued to be a pathway to family life that many gay male couples choose to take, and there are agencies that help to match potential parents with potential surrogates who live in other, surrogacy-friendly States. When needed, New Yorkers are able to complete second or step parent adoptions in New York to finalize parental rights for a child that has been delivered through a surrogate from another State.

Gestational Surrogate

The difference between gestational and traditional surrogacy is that the baby resulting from gestational surrogacy is not related to the surrogate mother. An egg and sperm create an embryo which is then transferred to the surrogate via IVF. For a male same sex couple, both partners can contribute sperm so that each have an equal chance of being biologically related to the child; they would also need a female third party to donate the egg.

Having the options of different pathways for gay family planning (adoption, surrogacy or pregnancy via donor sperm) can be reassuring to a couple looking to have children, but it can also be overwhelming when trying to decide what is best for you. For a reputable and trustworthy attorney in New York who specializes in helping same sex couples have families, call Anthony M. Brown, head of Nontraditional Family and Estates division of Albert W. Chianese & Associations, at 212-953-6447 or email questions to Brown@awclawyer.com.

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in Adoption / Egg Donation / Featured Articles / IVF / Known Donor / Second Parent Adoption / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 3 comments

Greg Berlanti Welcomes First Child

Out television producer Greg Berlanti on Thursday welcomed his first child via surrogate.

Greg Berlanti (Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl) shared the happy news in an Instagram post on Saturday.

“It is with much pride and love that I introduce to the world my son, Caleb Gene Berlanti. … There is nothing I’ve wanted more, or waited for longer, than to be a father.”

Berlanti, 43, posted photos of himself and boyfriend, soccer star Robbie Rogers, holding Caleb.

gay surrogacy

“Achieving this dream would not have been possible without the love and support of my wonderful family and surrogate, incredible boyfriend, amazing friends and co-workers that encouraged me and helped me on this remarkable journey. Check back in approximately 25-30 years for the tell-all about how I screwed it all up, until then apologies for the over posting of baby photos.”

“My heart is full forever,” he added.

via ontopmag.com, February 21, 2016

Click here to read the entire article.

in In the News / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Is a Surrogate a Mother?

A battle over triplets raises difficult questions about the ethics of the surrogacy industry and the meaning of parenthood.

Last year, a 47-year-old California woman named Melissa Cook decided to become a commercial surrogate. Cook is a mother of four, including a set of triplets, and had served as a surrogate once before, delivering a baby for a couple in 2013. According to her lawyer, Harold Cassidy, she’d found it to be a rewarding way to supplement the salary she earned at her office job. “Like other women in this situation, she was motivated by two things: One, it was a good thing to do for people, and two, she needed some money,” Cassidy says.

For her second surrogacy, Cook signed up with a broker called Surrogacy International. Robert Walmsley, a fertility attorney and part owner of the firm, says he was initially reluctant to work with her because of her age, but relented after she presented a clean bill of health from her doctor. Eventually, Surrogacy International matched her with a would-be father, known in court filings as C.M.

surrogacy ethics

According to a lawsuit filed on Cook’s behalf in United States District Court in Los Angeles earlier this month, C.M. is a 50-year-old single man, a postal worker who lives with his elderly parents in Georgia. Cook never met him in person, and because C.M. is deaf, Cassidy says the two never spoke on the phone or communicated in any way except via email. In May, Cook signed a contract promising her $33,000 to carry a pregnancy, plus a $6,000 bonus in case of multiples. In August, Jeffrey Steinberg, a high-profile fertility doctor, used in vitro fertilization to implant Cook with three male embryos that were created using C.M.’s sperm and a donor egg. (According to the lawsuit, the gender selection was done at C.M.’s request.) When an egg donor is under 35, as C.M.’s was, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine strongly recommends implanting only one embryo to avoid a multiple pregnancy, but some clinics will implant more to increase the chances that at least one will prove viable. In this case, they all survived. For the second time in her life, Cook was pregnant with triplets. And soon, the virtual relationship she had with their father would fall apart.

Cook and C.M. are still strangers to each other, but they are locked in a legal battle over both the future of the children she’s going to bear and the institution of surrogacy itself. Because she’s come under pressure to abort one of the fetuses, Cook’s case has garnered some conservative media attention. This story, however, is about much more than the abortion wars. It illustrates some of the thorniest issues plaguing the fertility industry: the creation of high-risk multiple pregnancies, the lack of screening of intended parents, the financial vulnerability of surrogates, and the almost complete lack of regulation around surrogacy in many states.

The United States is one of the few developed countries where commercial, or paid, surrogacy is allowed—it is illegal in Canada and most of Europe. In the U.S., it’s governed by a patchwork of contradictory state laws. Eight states expressly authorize it. Four states—New York, New Jersey, Washington, and Michigan—as well as the District of Columbia prohibit it. In the remaining states, there’s either no law at all on commercial surrogacy or it is allowed with restrictions.

California is considered a particularly friendly place for surrogacy arrangements. In 1993, a California Supreme Court ruling, Johnson v. Calvert, denied the attempts of a gestational surrogate named Anna Johnson to assert maternal rights. (A gestational surrogate is one like Cook who has no genetic relationship to the fetus or fetuses she caries.) What mattered in determining maternity, the court ruled, were the intentions of the various parties going into the pregnancy: “Because two women each have presented acceptable proof of maternity, we do not believe this case can be decided without enquiring into the parties’ intentions as manifested in the surrogacy agreement,” the court said. It was a victory for Walmsley, who represented the couple who’d hired Johnson as their surrogate.

Slate.com, February 15, 2016, by Michelle Goldberg

Click here to read the entire article.

in Ethics / In the News / IVF / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Surrogacy Ethics – Is It Selfish for a Gay Couple to Have Kids via Surrogacy?

Surrogacy ethics are in the news more and more around the world.  Are gay men’s options for family limited to adoption?

 

Question – My husband and I are gay and are exploring the possibility of having children using an egg donor and a surrogate mother. Sometimes when we mention this in conversation, people ask us, in a chiding tone, Why don’t you adopt? They often then argue that with so many children in need of good homes, it would be ethically superior for us to adopt, instead of spending a small fortune so we can have children to whom we are genetically tied. In addition, there are ethical issues related to paying women for their eggs or paying women to carry our children as surrogates. Are we acting unethically — or at the least selfishly or self-indulgently — in pursuing biological children instead of adopting orphans who could benefit from what (we like to think) would be a good home? David Lat, New York

adopt

Answer – Anybody who is contemplating having a baby, by whatever means, could be adopting a child instead. If those who chide you include people who have biological children themselves, you might want to point this out. Come to think of it, your friends who don’t have children are also free, if they meet the legal requirements, to adopt. Every child awaiting adoption is someone who could benefit from parental volunteers. There is no good reason to pick on you.

The path you have chosen, it’s true, mixes commerce and reproduction through egg donation and surrogacy. But while acquiring an egg and then working with a surrogate mother are transactions with ethical risks, they can each be conducted in morally permissible ways. The main concerns I would have as to surrogacy ethics are avoiding exploitation — so you need to make sure that the donor and the surrogate are acting freely and are fairly compensated — and taking care that your understanding with the surrogate mother is clearly laid out in advance. But any responsible agency that assists you in this should cover these bases.

Wanting a biological connection with your child is pretty normal: We evolved to pass on our genes, after all, even if we’re free to give Mother Nature the side-eye.

New York Times, By KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH FEB. 10, 2016

Click here to read the entire article.

in Egg Donation / Ethics / Recently Added / Second Parent Adoption / Step Parent Adoption / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Surrogacy Workshop Part 1: Planning Your Journey / 2015 SF MHB

Men Having Babies created this Surrogacy Workshop in order to take a broad look at the crucial decisions and milestone gay men face in their pursuit of biological parenting. It outlines some of the typical steps and milestones parents go through, presented chronologically and as a decision-tree.

 

 

Initial research:

Check web, come to Planning Biological Parenthood meetings, speak to surrogacy veterans, and attend free consultations with agencies and watch this surrogacy workshop video. While you do not have to make all of the following decisions upfront, you may want to keep these questions in the back of your mind:

  • Consider surrogacy versus other options like adoption, foster care, shared parenting.
  • Consider Traditional Surrogacy (TS) versus Gestational Surrogacy (GS).
  • These options vary considerably in process, cost, duration, legality and likely future relationships with the surrogate /egg donor.
  • In TS, a surrogate is carrying a baby conceived through artificial insemination using the sperm of one of the intended parents. In GS, a carrier is impregnated with embryos created through IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), using the couples’ sperm and donated eggs.
  • If you decide on GS, consider various options for egg donation: unknown, known (donors who are open to meeting the children or providing additional medical history information should the need arise in the future), or even from a family member or a friend.
  • If you are a couple, think of paternity options: should one of you provide the sperm, or should you mix your samples before the insemination /fertilization? If you are doing IVF, you can fertilize half of the eggs with each sperm sample, so that the paternity of each embryo can be known, and you can choose to implant embryos from both dads.
  • Think ahead of your desired family makeup: are you likely to want to go through the process again in the future for a sibling? Would you like to maximize the possibility of having twins in the first round?
  • Consider options for establishing parentage: will you be seeking second parent adoption? Are you interested in a pre-birth order?
  • Understand the likely timeline for each scenario, and possible setbacks: the chances that you may need more than one cycle to achieve pregnancy, having to consider changing the egg or sperm donor, or even a carrier, and the possibility of a miscarriage.

Once you researched and considered these and other issues, you may be ready to decide: what professional help will you require in your process? Will you try to keep outside help to the minimum (the Independent Track)? Will you employ a full service agency – or maybe just a lawyer? Will you first choose a clinic?

See more at menhavingbabies.org

in Surrogacy / Videos  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Surrogacy Ban In China Reversed?

Surrogacy Ban In China Reversed?

Last week Chinese authorities also decided to drop a plan to ban surrogacy. Now aspiring parents can seek the help of Chinese women to act as surrogate mothers to gestate and give birth to their children. If China had banned the use of surrogate mothers, only those Chinese wealthy enough to hire surrogates overseas, in countries such as the United States, would have been able to use the practice.

Surrogacy

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, which is the main law-making body in China, decided last week to withdraw the draft legislation for banning use of surrogates. The move was surprising because China rarely reverses itself on a draft law after it has been publicized. Such a move could be seen as the government being indecisive, which could hurt its public image.

January 1 marks the official end of China’s one-child policy that for 36 years has forced couples to limit their offspring to slow the country’s population growth and now may plan to reverse their ban on surrogates.

“Some members of the Standing Committee argued the surrogacy cannot be totally forbidden,” Zhang Chunsheng, head of legal affairs at the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said at a news conference.

Even if there was a law banning it, “rich people would still be able to go abroad to countries where surrogacy is allowed,” Zhang said.

Surrogacy usually costs between $125,000 and $175,000 in countries such as the United States. The cost is somewhat less expensive in other countries, such as Thailand, India and Nepal, sources said.

Infertility rates rising

Some legislators argued that domestic surrogacy should be allowed because infertility rates are rising in China, and many aspiring parents need the option to have their own babies. A ban would only encourage the vast black market in the surrogacy business, which often results in exploitation of women, legislators said.

January 1, 2016 – VOANews.com by Saibal Dasgupta

Click here to read the entire article.

in In the News / International / Legal / Recently Added / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Ethical Surrogacy, a Proposed Framework

Ethical Surrogacy guidelines are imperative to a successful journey to parenthood.

At the Men Having Babies 2015 New York Ethical Surrogacy Conference we focused on teaching the public at large about surrogacy and providing tools to intended parents to ensure that their surrogacy journey is ethical and positive.

As part of our mission to promote ethical surrogacy practices that benefits all involved parties, Men Having Babies   is in the process of devising a framework for ethical surrogacy principles, protocols and best practices for intended parents. The latest version drafted by our Board and our Surrogates Advisory Board is available on menhavingbabies.org. The document is already available in English, French and Hebrew, and we are collaborating with several community organizations to translate this document to additional languages and collect feedback. Selected issues from this framework will also be brought up for discussion and public comments at our upcoming conferences.

Men Having Babies (“MHB”) is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to providing gay biological fathers and fathers-to-be with educational and financial support. We offer the following framework of ethical guidelines and best practices as part of our goal to promote surrogacy practices that minimize the risks and maximize the benefits to all involved. The framework comprises of three levels: a Statement of Principles, Baseline Protocols for Providers, and Recommended Best Practices for intended parents.

in Ethics / Legal / Legislation / Surrogacy / Videos  by Anthony Brown 0 comments