Sara Pic was born and raised in Uptown New Orleans (McMain ‘96!) and is a mom to a teen son and twin PreK-ers. She lives in River Ridge with her kids, her spouse, and her dog, Goobie.
DEFENDING OUR CHOSEN FAMILY
I met my now-spouse in 2015—I can’t remember exactly how they told me they had a son but I am sure it is not an easy thing to share with someone you are interested in. For many people, it’s a dealbreaker. But for me, it was quite the opposite—I had long wanted children of my own and had trouble finding other queer people on the same page as me. It was, instead, a deal-clincher. We began dating in 2016, moved in together (along with their then-10-year-old) in 2017, married in 2018, and in 2019, began the long, difficult, and expensive process of trying to have a baby together.
It is almost comical how easy it is for some people to get pregnant and how difficult it is for others. Some bizarre universal gag—that some people can get pregnant like sneezing, even when the outcome is not desired at all, and some may try and despair and try again and keep despairing. Sometimes, the difficulties are obvious as in our case, where neither of us produce sperm. But even with couples like ours, that’s not always such a huge barrier—there are many sperm-making people out there who are willing to help people like us. We also had the added difficulty of our age-related infertility. But, in the end, through perseverance and a $20,000 loan—two little embryos took hold in me. I gave birth to our twins in May 2020, at the height of the pandemic.
In the Eyes of the Court
As soon as I became pregnant, I looked into whether there would be any issues ensuring that my spouse would be recognized as the twins’ legal parent. I was relieved to learn that not long after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in 2015, it had also required states to add married spouses to their children’s birth certificates as well. Generally, a child born of a marriage is automatically considered a child of both of the married people, but I wasn’t sure how this would play out for us as a queer couple. We learned that in Louisiana, the birth certificates now had a space to list the name of the “Mother/Parent” and “Father/Parent.” Though it still seemed a little odd to write my spouse’s name on a line that said “Father”—that slash is doing a lot of work!—we were just happy to know there would be no fight there. Touro Hospital gave us no issues at all and we received our twins’ birth certificates with our names on them a couple months after their birth.
Unfortunately, my research during my pregnancy indicated that might not be the end of the story. Though names on a birth certificate are important, government records have less sway in other jurisdictions, such as other states. Though states are required to give “full faith and credit” to other states’ records, they have some wiggle room in allowing their own laws to supersede. There is no such wiggling allowed for court judgments, however. The U.S. Supreme Court has been firm on this—courts must respect the judgments of other courts. Many attorneys and advocates for LGBTQ+ couples have interpreted this to mean that families may be at risk if they do not get a court judgment, such as an adoption order, affirming their parentage.
Gay families have long used adoption as a way to protect their families prior to the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage. It was not uncommon, for example, for one partner to adopt the other—yes, an adult adopting an adult. Not super common, but not unheard of at all. It’s for protection of assets and decision-making authority. A parent-child relationship is a legal relationship in the eyes of a judge so they can inherit property, and so on. The point was simply to use the legal systems available to make our families recognized in the eyes of the court.
The Gauntlet
In 2020, when the twins were born, all the way through to 2022, there was just no way I was going to pursue formalizing my spouse’s parentage through adoption. I was very COVID-cautious, especially with the twins, who were born premature. I was not going to spend any time with them in government buildings unless I absolutely had to. Additionally, I was not too concerned about challenges to my spouse’s parentage at that time. We were not traveling and we had friendly executives in office at both the state and national level.
That changed this year. We realized we could no longer put off the adoption. We needed a court order stating that, yes, these children are yours. There have been hints among certain U.S. Supreme Court justices that same-sex marriage, like abortion, could be on the chopping block. If our marriage is at risk, then my spouse’s parentage is at risk. If anything happened to me, the children must remain with their other parent, my spouse. Though I love and trust my family of origin, I did not want to leave any of this open for interpretation by a court or government agency. My spouse is their parent. Period.
We filed for a so-called “intrafamily adoption” this spring. In an intrafamily adoption, such as a “stepparent” adoption, all prior parental rights do not have to be terminated. Though other (more liberal) states allowed for “second parent” adoptions prior to the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, Louisiana does not. In a second parent adoption, the parents adopting intrafamily did not need to be married (as it was not then legal for same-sex couples to marry). In Louisiana, the only way to have my spouse declared a legal parent without terminating my parental rights is through a stepparent adoption, only available to us as a married couple. Though it angered me to have to refer to their actual parent as a stepparent in the court filings, we needed that line in the court judgment, stating that the twins are legally my spouse’s just as much as they are my own.
The process was far more complex and time-intensive than I anticipated for what is essentially an uncontested proceeding. My spouse had to submit two different types of background checks (a criminal check and a child abuse check) from every state they had lived in, which included being fingerprinted at the sheriff’s office. We also had to submit proof from two different government agencies that no, the children truly did not have a father. Though I had never heard of this, there is actually a registry for men who think they are fathers to children (but the mothers did not list them on the birth certificate) called the “putative father registry,” which provided me with a brisk certification that no, no father had filed with their registry, thank you very much. We also had to provide proof that no one had filed a lawsuit to force a filiation proceeding (a legal judgment establishing paternity) either.
Additionally, we were assigned a caseworker from the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services who interviewed us for about two hours. Fortunately, that interview was all that was needed for a “home study”—no actual study of our house needed. The first question the caseworker asked was, “Are you both on the birth certificate?” We responded yes—and I tensed, bracing for her response. I was worried because there have been some cases of judges denying adoption orders to queer couples because they were married and both on the birth certificate—the judges’ reasoning that no adoption order was needed (with full obliviousness to the overall context of the times we live in, I’m sure). However, our caseworker simply noted this on her document and moved onto the next question.
Say “Cheese”
We arrived at court for our first and only proceeding two months after we filed our petition. Juvenile court is a depressing and eye-opening experience. Many people are there fighting the worst circumstances of their lives—trying to win back custody of their children, trying to fight astronomical child support payments, trying to get their kids out of jail. We were the first case to be seen by the judge that day.
My spouse and I sat at the table, leaning over a bit to answer the judge’s questions into the mics. The twins played in a corner with some toys that the court staff had available. In all, the proceeding took less than 10 minutes.
Through most of the process, I felt angry but determined. Angry that I had to go through with this to protect our family, but determined to make sure that every “i” was dotted and every “t” crossed. In the end though, as we sat at that little table, and the judge pronounced my spouse to be the twins’ legal parent, I felt joy surge through me. Definitely the joy of relief but joy all the same. There is something profoundly joyful (and profoundly queer) about choosing your family, standing before the eyes of the world and saying, “This child. I choose this child—I choose to care for, to cherish, to defend this child for as long as we both live.”
My spouse and I turned to each other and embraced, wiping away our tears. We were about to leave but the caseworker asked me if I wanted a picture. Surprised, I agreed—and my family gathered around the judge, our kids holding squishy toy gavels given to them by the judge, oblivious to the overall import but, I think, sensing our joy. We all smiled big for the camera. My spouse is their parent, their Moppa—and now that’s the way it will always be.
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illustrations by Victoria Allen
