An Important Legal Step to Protect Your Rights
Reproductive technology provides many same-sex married couples the opportunity to parent a biological child. For same sex female couples, the initial process to register a child’s parents on the birth certificate appears the same as the procedures for a heterosexual married couple. Florida vital records registers the names of both spouses as the child’s legal parents. While Florida and federal law universally and equally recognize marriages between heterosexual couples and same sex couples, a birth certificate may not always be sufficient to protect the rights of same sex parents. A birth certificate, while essential, does not always carry the same legal weight as a court judgment. A confirmatory adoption permanently establishing the rights of the parent who did not give birth to the child is an important step to protect parental rights. A confirmatory adoption a straightforward legal step that requests a Florida court to formally recognize and declare what is already true: that both spouses are the legal parents of their child for all purposes, in all states and all countries.
At Hausmann & Hickman, P.A., we help same-sex married couples secure this protection so that their parental rights rest on the firmest legal footing available.
Limitations of birth certificates
When a child is born to a same-sex married couple, both parents’ names usually appear on the birth certificate. In daily life this is often treated as proof of parentage. But a birth certificate is an administrative record, not a court judgment. In some circumstances, a parent’s rights established only by that record, particularly the rights of the nonbiological parent, can be questioned, challenged, or given less weight than a final judgment of adoption would receive. When there is no court judgment establishing parental rights, some families may not realize the impact of this until an issue arises due to moving states, changes in the family, or other potential legal concerns.
Florida law allows a couple to affirmatively establish and declare the parental rights of both parents through a confirmatory adoption Rather than creating a new parent-child relationship, it provides legal protection for the relationship that already exists.
The legal protection of a court judgment
A confirmatory adoption gives both the biological and the nonbiological parent the protections that come only from a final judgment of adoption. The significance of this is found in a principle known as full faith and credit. Under the United States Constitution, every state must recognize the judgments validly entered by the courts of another state. A parental relationship confirmed by a Florida court is therefore entitled to recognition not only here in Florida, but throughout the United States and internationally if your family travels or relocates.
This matters because a birth certificate is not always honored the same way from one jurisdiction to the next, while a court judgment of adoption carries a recognized legal authority that follows your family wherever life takes you.
How we can help
At Hausmann & Hickman, P.A., we have spent decades guiding families through adoption and reproductive law. We work with all types of families, including LGBTQ+ couples building their families through adoption and reproductive technology in Florida. We will review your circumstances, explain how a confirmatory adoption applies to your family, and handle the legal process from start to finish.
If you are a same-sex married couple and want to be confident that both parents’ rights are fully secured, we would be glad to help. Please contact our office to discuss whether a confirmatory adoption is right for your family.