We are all basking in the glow of our recent victories in LGBT rights, from the latest great state of New York Legalizing gay marriage, to Florida’s lifting the ban on gay adoption last year. We are definitely on a trajectory
to equal rights that will not be denied. However, here in Florida, despite our advances, if you are the non-biological or adoptive parent of “your child” conceived or adopted by your partner whether before or during your relationship or domestic partnership, your status as parent is tenuous without further legal steps being taken.
The common scenario is you are in a committed relationship and you and your partner decide that she will inseminate and bear a child, or one of you will adopt a child with the intention that you both will parent this child. Legally, in Florida, the adoptive or birth mother is the only legal parent of the child (assuming the biological father is an anonymous donor or the child is adopted.) Without doing more, the co-parent“parent’s” at the will of the legal parent. If your relationship ends badly, the co-parent can be, and often is, denied any access at all to the child.
On the other hand, the legal parent does not have any right to demand child support for the child she planned that the co-parent would help support.
Now that we have the right to adopt as gays in Florida, there is the possibility of a second parent adoption: this is not prohibitively expensive and will likely create a legal co-parenting obligation of support and right to joint custody in the event of a break-up. This concept of a same-sex second parent adoption is new in Florida. It remains to be seen how courts will treat same-sex families in the event of a dispute over custody and support. Given the fact that the Florida Constitution and Statutes both prohibit recognition of same-sex marriage and any relationship that bears an appearance of marriage (such as a civil union), one has to wonder whether a Florida court would treat a gay family custody case the same as a heterosexual custody case. Time will tell.
A couple that is co-parenting a child will want to create several legal documents that provide the co-parent with some of the rights a legal parent will have, and...