PITA Birth Records

[judecorp]

(x-posted to july2007babies, sorry if you see it twice)

Oh, what a huge PITA.

So today Jen and I got a stack of papers we were supposed to get two months ago with a bunch of papers we'll need to bring to our birth center. You know, like releases and stuff. Well, one of them is a "birth certificate worksheet" and there's a whole bunch of info on "Mother of the Child" and then a whole bunch of info on "Father of the Child." Then on another sheet of paper there was a phone number and "Call Michelle with questions," so I did. Hello, Michelle.

Jen and I were a little baffled because a) we are not putting any "Father of the Child" information on our birth certificate, but b) Jen and I are married and therefore she is also legally responsible for our kid.

According to Michelle, what WE are supposed to do with our birth certificate information is this:

1. I am supposed to cross out everything that says "Father" and write in "Second Parent." (How professional.) And make sure that I check the box that says I am married.
2. When the kid is born, the birth center - instead of just sending the forms to the Town Clerk for immediate processing - has to fax my crossed-out document to the Records Department in Boston so they can check it over.
3. Then, our paperwork has to GO TO COURT in Boston so that a judge can "decide what to do with it." It is up to the judge whether they put the second parent information on or not.

"Michelle, what does the judge usually do?" Apparently the judge USUALLY puts the second parent on the birth certificate.

USUALLY? Like, sometimes the judge can just decide NOT to? Oh holy hell, Michelle, you say all of this with such a chipper voice and I just want to strangle you with my telephone cord.

Comments

[laursabeth.livejournal.com]

Grf. I'm sorry that you and Jen have to deal with this. So frustrating for a state that legally recognizes your marriage. Un-cool...most un-cool.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

You would think that they would have updated the form by now. I mean, we can't be the first same-sex married couple having a baby in this state! They DID update the marriage license forms, so it's POSSIBLE. Just fix the form!

[thespian.livejournal.com]

if the judge doesn't approve her, I will go down to boston and BEAT THEM.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Well, I /think/ the approval is a formality. But I will certainly call you if a beat down is necessary. :)

[rexlezard.livejournal.com]

::sigh:: Frustrating, not cool, and stupid - but infinitely better than the less than savoury alternatives.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

True, true.

Of course, we still need to go through second parent adoption proceedings, because I doubt our kid's weird birth certificate will hold up in another state.

[rexlezard.livejournal.com]

What bunk. Bunkety, bunk, bunk, bunk.

Um, do you happen to have Michelle's number handy? I might have need to give her a call in the next few months.

I am anticipating that my kid will have hir own birth certificate weirdness - I'm legally male, thus, in Ontario at least, a father not a mother. I'm wondering what would happen if I were to give birth in MA?

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I will have these helpful documents for a good long time. Would you like her number now, or for the happy event?

And yeah, I will be interested LIKE WOAH to find out what you will have to do. That will be so curious!

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I wonder what would happen if you listed Jen as the mother...

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Well, good question. I think the hospital would bug, because I'm pretty sure they expect me to do it.

[changinglight.livejournal.com]

Are you freaking KIDDING me?!

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I know, right? SO WEIRD.

[aminahfiddler.livejournal.com]

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.

Stupid stupid stupid.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

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.

[eight.livejournal.com]

Definitely frustrating, and I don't want to minimize that whatsoever. I hope it's okay to point out the other perspective though:

Legally, Massachusetts' case law precedent requires a judge's consent for any non-biological parent to be declared the parent and it has to occur after the child's birth. The court just aims to determine what is in the child's best interests - and my guess is that Michelle was cheerful because the judge has no ground on which to deny Jen parentage since you are obviously starting a family and have a legal union. The system works this way for a lot of reasons, and it's not because you and Jen are both women - if Jen were a man and in the same position of non-biological parent, the procedure would be the same.

Not to say the system is perfect because I do believe it could use work - but it's just trying to protect the interests of parents (especially biological moms) and children whether in the context of adoption or surrogacy. The judge's pronouncement in the end will safeguard Jen's rights with respect to your little girl (because unless the judge says Jen is the second parent, to my knowledge it is not correct to say Jen will be legally responsible for your kid).

And while this is just a huge formality than can feel like a burden right now or an infringement based on gender, if the judge eats something bad for breakfast and does something scheisty, I can guarantee it will not be a struggle to get that overturned.

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

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.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

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.

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

Damn.

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.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wish that was true also. But MA is a little too "old school puritanical" to do anything 100% cool. :)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Well, yes and no. Massachusetts is pretty wonky in the birth certificate department. Like the whole problem with if a woman is married to a man but is pregnant with another man's baby... legally if the woman is married than the person who has to be on the birth certificate is her husband (even if he is not the father) UNLESS you file a bunch of other weird papers.

So since Jen and I are currently married, she SHOULD be the de facto parent, biological or otherwise. Because this kid is being born in the context of a legal marriage, which MA is usually pretty specific about.

I'm sure it's just a formality for the judge to approve whatever, but I'm also sure that having a birth certificate with words crossed out and re-written looks REALLY un-legal .

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I know, right?

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.

[oppendonnell.livejournal.com]

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.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

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. :)

[artemis44.livejournal.com]

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.

However, they made NO mention of a judge, and honestly, I don't think one was involved. It was just a matter of it going downtown, getting typed out and stamped, and then being mailed to the city he was born in and the city we live in. No judge involved... Now, maybe for unmarried folk a judge is involved, but I really, really, really don't think so in our cases.

Perhaps give a quick call to GLAD? They have lawyer referrals as well...

Are y'all going to do the second-parent adoption? We are, because every time we travel across state lines, it makes us nervous... once we get the second-parent adoption finalized, then C is legally recognized as a parent, even by the feds...

sigh... frustrating that it takes so much work to get our little family recognized and safe, but so worth it.

Good luck, and let us know what you find out!

[kieron.livejournal.com]

We are doing 2nd parent adoption - ESPECIALLY so the feds will recognize us - but also for that pesky across state lines deal that makes me nervous as hell as well.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

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!

[artemis44.livejournal.com]

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...

course, that could just be from my experience as a kid of a queer, growing up in texas, with the ever-present knowledge that I could be taken away at any time... paranoid much? nah...

and yeah, the second-party adoption fee is quite the insult-added-to-injury, no? I mean, $2K just to get a judge to let my partner ADOPT hir own freakin' kid?!?!??! You've got to be kidding me! Luckily, the tax credit we got from declaring me "head of household", thanks to the bean, is paying for it this year... convenient!

Okay, clearly I am avoiding work with these long comments, so I will attempt to extract myself from el-jay and return to work. Also known as "see you in 10 minutes!" lol!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

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.

[artemis44.livejournal.com]

from what we saw, the HoH has little to do with genetics, actually, and is only about who pays for 50%+ of the child's expenses, so she should qualify.

Of course, I am SO FAR from being a tax pro - or even a tax amateur - so definitely check it out... and let us know what you find out! But from what I saw, it was all about the benjamins...

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Cool, I'm sure I'll be researching heavily before next April. :)

[nikisazombie.livejournal.com]

Lovely. We haven't even got any of that done. Noone mentioned it, we didn't know to. I'm sorry you have to go through alot of crap about it, though. *sigh* Surely he'll allow it.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Well, I think most places they just stick you with the forms during labor or after you've had the baby. Because it's pretty routine, unless you have a "situation."

I wouldn't worry about it. xo.

[nikisazombie.livejournal.com]

Ah. Ok.:) I forgot to ask the ob about it all today anyways. *lol* I need to ask him if I have to do that "Epidural class" to be able to have one. *sigh* If so, I have to sign up for it.... because I plan on getting one if possible.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Wow, I didn't know you had to take a class for that. Weird.

[nikisazombie.livejournal.com]

Me either, until a lady from church told me. I don't think it's at every hospital, though. I asked her how big the needle is... it's smaller than I had pictured. *lol* (I guess that's a good thing! I had images of a freaky long needle!!)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've heard it's not too bad.

[nikisazombie.livejournal.com]

I'm not all that worried about it, and I hate needles. I figure if I'm in that much pain... that a (not so) little needle won't hurt anything... as long as I don't look at it before they put it in. (I mean, I don't mind *that* much, but *right* before they put it in... I might freak out a bit.)

Birth certificates

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, sorry to post anonymously, I don't have a livejournal profile.
I live in Australia and believe me, you *really* shouldn't be whingeing. I would love it if we got to have both our names on our baby's birth certificate just by crossing out a few labels and having it sent to a judge but it's illegal. Get that, illegal. Only one woman and one male (or no male) allowed. And second-parent adoption? Doesn't exist. My partner will have absolutely no legal relationship to our child. And forget same-sex marriage - it's happening in Uruguay but in Australia? Forget it.

Please forgive this little outburst of bitterness, but do please reflect that you are really bloody lucky, you know.

Re: Birth certificates

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

First of all let me say that I think it is awful and unfair that MOST people aren't able to have both names on a child's birth certificate. It makes me incredibly angry, and it's the sort of think I work toward whenever I can.

And while having a crossed out (invalid) birth certificate is at least MARGINALLY gratifying and validating, it's not enough. Here in the state of Massachusetts, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples were Constitutionally required to have the same rights and privileges as opposite-sex couples. So this should be a non-issue here, but it's not. I'm not diminishing the injustice of your situation by arguing the injustice of ours as well, especially in a state that claims to "know better."