Holly S*** that's not right. You should have to go before a Judge to decide what goes on the birth certificate. I vote you rewrite the document and make it say Mother twice then offer to send the form to stupid chipper Michelle to give out to other folks that have 2 moms. Then she can change it to say Father twice too when that becomes necessary.
I guess it goes to a judge type person to approve a "modified birth certificate." Which is a whole host of other problems, because most states will not recognize a "modified" birth certificate. We don't plan to move out of state any time soon or anything, but we do LEAVE the state quite a bit.
They should make the form more gender-neutral. It wouldn't be that hard. "Parent 1" and "Parent 2" or something.
You just mirrored a lot of my thoughts. I suspected that things like sperm donors had forced the state to iron out most these legal issues already, and that the only real difference here is that the non-biological parent is female and not male.
I would suspect that a lot of parents who use sperm donors simply write in the Husband's information and leave it at that. It's not like the state is going to do DNA testing on every child born to make sure the parents match.
Hopefully, 30 Year from now, the kids being born in this legal morass will hear stories about how the legal idiocy their parents went through, and wonder how such an unenlightened America could have existed.
Well, in MA if a woman is married (to a man), her husband is the de facto father on the birth certificate, even if he isn't the father. If a woman wants to name another man who is not her husband as the father, she has to fill out a bunch of "documents of non-paternity" and stuff like that.
So if a straight married couple uses a sperm donor (and sperm donors from sperm banks have no legal rights), the husband WOULD be the father on the birth certificate. MA law is like that.
And here I was hoping the grief you're going through is just an artifact of legal issues around sperm Donors in general, instead of something that seems custom designed to harass same sex couples.
That's what baffles me more than anything else. That they haven't updated their paperwork. Now we're all lined up to get a crossed-out birth certificate. How fake.
I am hoping (assuming, since she sounds knowledgeable) that eight above is right. I thought that if you were married, a non-biological parent automatically went on the birth certificate. I didn't realize there was any judicial review, for men or for women. But if they do it to men too I guess it's fair.
I thought that if you were married you automatically made it on the birth certificate. I mean, that's what the law says for husbands, anyway... that if you're married to a pregnant woman, you're the dad even if you aren't biological.
But for women, that's something else. And then you end up with a modified birth certificate. :)
The way they explained it to us was that we did indeed have to cross out "father" and write in "mother" (and don't even get us started on the gender issues that can bring up!), and the one we got in the mail did indeed have little typed xxxx's over teh father parts and stuff - which, it appears, may or may not hold up in court since the law says only unaltered birth certificates are valid. But that's the system we have, so that's what we did
( ... )
We /are/ planning to go through the second-parent adoption process... when we can come up with the money. It's costly! (Ouch.)
I am more than a little concerned about receiving a "modified" birth certificate. One would think that after all of this time they could have come up with a non-gender-specific birth certificate form, so you wouldn't have to have a bunch of Xs. Talk about making someone's family look totally awkwrd.
Maybe I will have to give GLAD a little phone call. Good idea!
It was explained to me that the Governor (or his appointee) is in charge of authorizing any changes to the birth certificate form, and that this was Romney's little way of sticking it to the queers... the assumption is that they would hold up in Mass, since it was Mass officials who cleared them in the first place, but it seems to me that some backward judge in tennessee or texas could easily use the altered documents as an excuse to tear a family apart
( ... )
Yeah, I'm not at all surprised about Romney. I have no nice things to say about him. I'm especially cheesed right now about his "universal health care" mandate that is going to require working class and lower-middle-class folks to purchase health insurance that they really can't afford - because it is required! Grrrr. Douchebag.
But yeah, it seems like a slap in the face to go through the legal rigamarole of adoption for a baby that we've planned for for a really long time. Especially the home study. I mean, I know it's mostly a formality but someone's going to come into our family home and decide if it's fit for the child that is already living in it? Grump.
I'm glad you managed to get it covered with tax returns. We're not sure how we're going to file next year. Theoretically Jen should be HoH because she's actually worked a decent amount, but I don't know if the Feds will allow her to claim the baby (or me, for that matter) as her dependent without having done the adoption - even with the botched MA birth certificate.
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Stupid stupid stupid.
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They should make the form more gender-neutral. It wouldn't be that hard. "Parent 1" and "Parent 2" or something.
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I would suspect that a lot of parents who use sperm donors simply write in the Husband's information and leave it at that. It's not like the state is going to do DNA testing on every child born to make sure the parents match.
Hopefully, 30 Year from now, the kids being born in this legal morass will hear stories about how the legal idiocy their parents went through, and wonder how such an unenlightened America could have existed.
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So if a straight married couple uses a sperm donor (and sperm donors from sperm banks have no legal rights), the husband WOULD be the father on the birth certificate. MA law is like that.
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And here I was hoping the grief you're going through is just an artifact of legal issues around sperm Donors in general, instead of something that seems custom designed to harass same sex couples.
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That's what baffles me more than anything else. That they haven't updated their paperwork. Now we're all lined up to get a crossed-out birth certificate. How fake.
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But for women, that's something else. And then you end up with a modified birth certificate. :)
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I am more than a little concerned about receiving a "modified" birth certificate. One would think that after all of this time they could have come up with a non-gender-specific birth certificate form, so you wouldn't have to have a bunch of Xs. Talk about making someone's family look totally awkwrd.
Maybe I will have to give GLAD a little phone call. Good idea!
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But yeah, it seems like a slap in the face to go through the legal rigamarole of adoption for a baby that we've planned for for a really long time. Especially the home study. I mean, I know it's mostly a formality but someone's going to come into our family home and decide if it's fit for the child that is already living in it? Grump.
I'm glad you managed to get it covered with tax returns. We're not sure how we're going to file next year. Theoretically Jen should be HoH because she's actually worked a decent amount, but I don't know if the Feds will allow her to claim the baby (or me, for that matter) as her dependent without having done the adoption - even with the botched MA birth certificate.
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