LGBTQ+ parents are reportedly scrambling to secure their parental rights before Donald Trump takes the oath of office.
Attorney Meghan Alexander told Advocate she usually receives about three calls a week from LGBTQ+ parents seeking second-parent adoptions. The week Trump won, she fielded 26 calls. Since then, they have just kept coming.
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Project 2025, which is believed to be the blueprint for the Trump administration, essentially calls to eliminate LGBTQ+ rights and states, “Only heterosexual, two-parent families are safe for children.”
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“The advice is the same as it’s been for the last couple of decades, which is to do a second-parent adoption,” Alexander explained. “Do not depend on the federal government or the gay right to marry to give you parental rights.”
A 2023 report from a coalition of LGBTQ+ advocacy groups explains that second-parent adoption “can be used to establish a legal relationship between a parent and a child OR to obtain an adoption decree for someone who is already a legal parent through another pathway to parentage, such as the marital presumption.”
Shelbi Day, Chief Policy Officer for Family Equality, told LGBTQ Nation when the report was released that even married LGBTQ+ couples cannot rely on the marital presumption and should take further steps to protect themselves.
She said that the presumption can be challenged in some states and that Family Equality “strongly suggests that parents take additional steps to establish legal parentage to ensure that children have legal stability and access to all of the rights and benefits of legal parentage no matter where people travel and no matter what happens between the parents in the future.”
This is also true even if both parents are on a child’s birth certificate, which she said “does not establish a legal parent-child relationship.”
Alexander dispensed similar advice to Advocate. She also said parentage orders are not as effective as second-parent adoptions, at least in Texas where she practices, because these orders have not been challenged extensively in the courts. Adoptions, on the other hand, have been repeatedly upheld.
LGBTQ+ family law expert Nancy Polikoff agreed, saying adoptions are better understood and more “universally recognized.”
“When we are looking at the possibility of cutting back on LGBT family recognition, states that are not inclined to recognize the legitimacy of parenting by LGBT people are going to be emboldened to deny that status whenever they can,” she said.
“Nobody is expecting Obergefell to be overturned anytime soon,” she continued. “Unfortunately, I think parentage is one of those places where if a court is just not going to be as protective in a particular state, I think they are going to have more leeway to discriminate under a Trump administration.”
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In addition to many parents simply not knowing this is the best path to protecting there families, another barrier looms large: Second-parent adoptions can carry a hefty price tag.
“It makes me sick to think there are people who need this done and cannot get it done,” Haley Swenson told Advocate. Swenson and her wife, Alieza Durana, rushed to complete a second-parent adoption of their son after Trump won the election.
Unable to afford the $3,500 they needed to begin the process, they reached out to friends and family for help.
“It’s unclear what they want to do, and that lack of specificity is what’s really scary if you’re a queer parent because you don’t really know how to protect yourself,” Swenson said of the incoming administration.
“So since we know there was this one thing we could do to protect ourselves, and we hadn’t done it yet, it was like, ‘OK, there are so many unknowns — let’s at least take care of what we can.”
The best path toward obtaining legal parentage rights may vary by state. Check out this report for more information.
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