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Married Same-Sex Couples Need Not Be Pre-certified to Adopt Spouse's Child

A Monroe County Family Court Judge has ruled that married same-sex couples should be treated like their heterosexual counterparts when one parent wants to adopt the child of the other. Usually, same-sex couples needed to submit to an intrusive and expensive process called pre-certification when one wanted to adopt the other's child. This situation is very common with lesbian couples where the couple have used a sperm donor to have a child. This required the non-biological parent to go through the pre-certification process to allow both to be legal parents. On the other hand, married heterosexual couples in the same situation are allowed to skip the pre-certification process and file for a step-parent adoption. This ruling allows married same-sex couples to be treated the same as straight couples.

While this is just one judge in family court and it is unclear how widespread this ruling will be adopted, I expect this practice will become widespread.

Full post as published by Queer Law Watch on February 22, 2009 (boomark / email).