LGBT Families

The legal landscape for LGBT families has been changing so rapidly that couples and families need a lawyer to help them navigate this exciting, but still confusing, time.

While some states, New York among them, are favorable to families headed by LGBT people, many remain neutral at best and hostile at worst. The ways in which you choose to build and protect your family need to consider the benefits available under favorable states as well as the challenges imposed by hostile states.

The good news is that there are more options available today for building a family than ever before. Fertility clinics, adoption agencies, surrogacy agencies, sperm banks, and foster agencies actively recruit LGBT couples and single people as clients.

Brian can help you:

  • Decide when it is to your advantage – or disadvantage – to marry
  • Draft a prenuptial agreement that reflects your relationship and needs
  • Determine the best way for you to build your family, whether it is through egg, sperm, or embryo donation, adoption, or surrogacy
  • Identify states where you will be able to adopt jointly as a same-sex couple, or obtain a parentage judgment naming both partners as legal parents
  • Supply you with LGBT-friendly service providers as you pursue adoption, surrogacy, or donor-assisted parenthood
  • Complete a second-parent adoption for a non-biological parent
  • Protect your family through proper estate planning

What You Need To Know About Second-Parent Adoption

Thanks to marriage equality, in New York a non-biological mother in a married lesbian couple can take advantage of the legal presumption that a child born to her spouse is her child and have her name placed on their child’s birth certificate. But it is important to keep in mind that the non-biological mother’s parental rights flow from their marriage – a marriage which is not recognized in all states. In order to guarantee her legal relationship should the family move or travel out of a marriage-recognition state, she must complete a second-parent adoption, a process with which Brian can assist.