Second-parent adopted. Now he's really stuck with both of us!

Alicia, Max and his daddies, and Judge Lopez Torres

We had our second-parent adoption hearing on February 27. All went well and the adoption is complete. We now have an adoption order, which is portable nationally and internationally, and it establishes that Jeff and I are equally the legal parents of Max. The court required that we bring Alicia to New York and that she participate in a separate surrender hearing (surrendering her presumed parental rights). All this despite the fact that Alicia had already done what is sufficient in any other New York adoption our lawyer had heard of -- sign and notarize a surrender of parental rights form. Though it is difficult to believe, we were told that we were the first couple to be adopting a child in Brooklyn who had been born through surrogacy.

The judge met with Alicia for over an hour. While intense for Alicia, it was a wonderful opportunity for Alicia to have a dialogue with the judge about how some people happily create families through surrogacy. We could not have had a better advocate for the process than Alicia. Then in the afternoon we had the adoption hearing. The judge was very nice. She had clearly spent a lot of time reviewing our petition. She cited the home study and letters of recommendation that friends had written on our behalf and spoke about the love that Jeff and I have for each other and the strength of our relationship in finding that Max's best interests are served by the second-parent adoption.

With the adoption complete, it feels like the culmination of a huge journey -- all the contracts, agencies, medical hoops, and legal work that went into creating and protecting our family. A happy day in the end!

Our attorney, Anthony Brown, and us with the judge and her clerks