Hello everyone! Happy Spring!  Thank you for subscribing to the newsletter for Diana Adams Law & Mediation, PLLC. This monthly newsletter keeps you informed about the legal and activism work we are doing to support LGBTQI, polyamorous, and other nontraditional families. This month, we send messages of progress even in these trying political times to keep us hopeful enough to resist.

• Join Us for Child-Parent Security Act Advocacy Day: April 25 in Albany, NY
• Canada Platonic Co-Parenting Win
• Victory: Sexual Orientation Discrimination is a Form of Sex Discrimination!
• Where in the World is Diana? Travel Schedule Updates

For the last few years, our firm has been watching a piece of legislation slowly move through the New York state legislature. This bill, the Child-Parent Security Act, was just reintroduced to the New York Assembly on March 28th, and would, if passed, make an enormous difference in our practice and in the lives of the families we serve.

The CPSA has two primary functions that would affect the families we work with. First, it would create a legal tool called a “judgment of parentage” which would allow non-biological parents, whether married to the biological parent or not, to establish and protect a legal parent-child relationship that would be respected from state to state. This would mean that LGBTQ families wouldn’t have to go through the time, expense, and hassle of obtaining second-parent adoptions to protect their family relationships, which would be great!

The other function of the CPSA would be to provide statutory clarity about the legal status of gamete donors and gestational carriers in the use of assisted reproduction technologies, including assisted insemination and gestational surrogacy. This would protect intended parents, as well as sperm donors, egg donors, and gestational carriers, from the legal confusion that can be so harmful to the stability of the families with whom we work and legalize surrogacy in NY.

You can read more about the bill here: CPSA, Assembly Bill A06959. Andy and Amy are going to Resolve.org’s advocacy day in Albany on April 25th to help representatives understand why these measures are so important for New York’s families. Resolve is focused on IVF, surrogacy and infertility, but the lobby day also welcomes advocates for LGBTQ parents in our coalition.

We are seeking families to join this advocacy day and tell their stories, so if you have a story to tell about your family and you want to help advocate for other families like yours, please join us there! You will receive education there about the bill and your talking points, and be sent to a meeting with your Assemblyperson’s staff.

Recently, a court in Canada granted legal co-parenting rights to an unmarried, non-romantic same-sex partner of a child. This is reported as the first time this arrangement, of family based on close friendship and co-parenting rather than romance, was legally recognized in Canada.

The article states that there are only a few known cases of platonic co-parenting- but there are many more known to us and our community of advocates for LGBTQ and nontraditional families in the US. In fact, that’s the primary type of client that inspires us to add ‘nontraditional’ to our practice. We have done second-parent adoptions to affirm the parenting rights of a nonbiological parent who is a close friend but not romantic partner of the biological mother. In cases in which the platonic co-parents are different sex and both the biological parent, often through insemination, their names may both be on the birth certificate as legal parents, but we assist them in creating a Platonic Co-Parenting Agreement.

It is essential that platonic co-parents create a Co-Parenting Agreement with the support of a knowledgeable professional, to spell out the expectations on both sides, including amounts of financial support, time each will contribute to child care, the extent to which they will share parental decision-making and their intentions regarding medical, educational and religious decisions, whether they agree to live in the same location for 18 years, and how they will welcome future romantic partners of either parent, if at all. Co-parenting in a traditional configuration can be challenging enough, but particularly when we don’t have many models for platonic co-parenting, it is essential that intended co-parents slow down and work through these decisions with the support of a professional to create a stable family situation for the child and parents.

We are happy to offer a free consultation to any NY residents interested in inquiring about whether a Co-Parenting Agreement is right for your family.

On April 4, 2017, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination based on sex, protects lesbian, gay, and bisexual employees. This is the first federal appeals court to conclude that “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination.” This is a major victory in the long battle for antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans.

Diana travels between New York City and Frankfurt, Germany, managing our European and NY offices, and is available to clients in both regions, with frequent touring of the U.S. and Europe in between. Diana welcomes opportunities to meet with clients and to teach along her travels.

• April 27-30, 2017: Vienna, Austria

• June 22-25, 2017:  Kinnernet Europe Imagination Festival Unconference in Avallon, France

• July 4-31, 2017: NYC

• August 1-7, 2017: San Francisco for LGBT Bar’s Lavender Law conference

• August 26-31, 2017:  Berlin, Germany

• September 9-13, 2017:  Valencia, Spain

• September 18-October 5, 2017: NYC

• October 6-8, 2017: Diana teaches at Omega Institute’s Women & Power conference

• October 9-13, 2017: Albany, NY region

Please contact us if you’d like to schedule time to meet with Diana for a consultation while she is in your city or inquire about a speaking engagement.

Andy is based in New York City and consistently available to clients there.