I and Irwin cont d from p. are the bio_ logical parents. Jane and I are the custodial parents. Rosie has my last name — a huge signal to the outside world that I am an equal parent. Within our family dynarn- » ics, Jane always makes sure that my name is first on the permis- sion slips, emergency contacts, etc., to send a clear signal that I am a participating parent. Over the years, this has become seamless.” Irwin and his partner John are very involved with the children. “It does mean that we get a lot more free time than a lot of lesbian moms we know,” Jane said. “When I turned 50, Irwin and John took the kids for a week while we went on spring vaca- tion.” . Having another set of parents means that “some things are harder,” Jane admitted. “We had to develop a decision-making process. There’s a lot of discus- sion, a lot of emotional work.” But one of the hardest challenges Jane had to face came from with- in. “Now, as the biological mother, I am the presumptive par- ent, the legal parent. That was hard for me to bend my mind around — that I was the privileged one. It hurt. I had to come to grips with it, that I had all the rights and Joan had none. One day I said something about ‘my kids’ and realized, ‘Oh my God! They’re not just my kids.’ “It was ideologically important that I make that internal shift —— that the kids are OURS. I had to realize that sharingpower sometimes means I have to give up power.” Joan and Jane are going to court, seeking full legal rights in what they term a “third-party” adoption. “It will be quite a strug- gle,” Jane said. “This has never been tested. But it has applica- tions for heterosexual people as ‘ well.” She concluded, “When we create gay and lesbian fami- lies, we challenge tradition. From love, we created our family. From love we will go forward with this challenge.” when the Bough Breaks Breaking up is hard to do — but when gay and lesbian couples wind up in the courtroom disput- ing custody of adopted children, they face a pile of problems het- erosexual couples don’t even have to consider. There have been too many cases where a gay or les- bian co-parent has been deemed a legal stranger to a child by the courts. The legal parent then has an absolute right to deny even the most fleeting contact — despite the fact that the other partner may have spent years raising the child. Some courts have started to turn the tide. Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Maryland, and Rhode Island have granted ‘de facto’ parental status, which allows ex-partners to visit the children they have helped to raise. Other rulings cover child support and the obligation to con- tinue health insurance coverage for the children. Ironically, some states that allow same-sex adoption are the first to deny visitation to ex- partners who have not gone through the formal adoptive process. New York and California have both issued rulings denying visitation to ex—partners. Experts recommend that if a couple cannot — or chooses not to ~ have their children for- mally adopted by the partner who has no legal relationship to them, they should write a formal parent- ing agreement and abide by its terms. Otherwise, if a split can’t I. be handled amicably, arrange- ments for children are left to the not-so-tender mercies of an incon- sistent court system. In the end, love does conquer all. The very human rela- tionships spanning the biological, emotional, and spiritual ties between people have proven time and again to be more enduring than any accident of genetics. Now the legal system is slowly beginning to recognize this reali- ty, and the courts are catching up with the rest of the parade.V Cynthia Potts is a freelance writer and mom who lives in Plattsburgh. She welcomes feed- back and can be reached at ctpotts @juno .c0m.