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Colorado Pages

Current Colorado Adoption Law

Colorado HB 1286 -- VOTE NO!

HB 1286 proposes to allow allows one biological parent, e.g. the father, to voluntarily terminate parental rights and essentially endorse adoption as the future of his child -- and using that, the state can take that to the courts to terminate the mother's rights against her will. I cannot believe it will stand up to a court challenge but it warrants active opposition. http://www.leg.state.co.us/2003a/pubhome.nsf Go to this site, and type in 1286 and then at the bottom press "submit" to pull up the bill in question.

Update Information on HB 1286

Sponsors of HB 1286 include Rep. Andrew Romanoff, Rep. Lauri Clapp and Lynn Rep. Hefley. Here are their contact addresses.

LYNN HEFLEY
Colorado State Representative, District 20
Office Location: 200 E. Colfax, Room 271
Denver, CO 80203
Phone: (303)866-2924

LAURI CLAPP
Colorado State Representative, District 37
Office Location: 200 E. Colfax, Room 271
Denver, CO 80203
Phone: (303)866-5510

ANDREW ROMANOFF
Assistant Minority Leader
Colorado State Representative, District 6
Office Location: 200 E. Colfax, Room 271
Denver, CO 80203
Phone: (303)866-2967
E-Mail: romanoff@coloradohouse.org

HB1235 - Vote Yes!

The House State Affairs Committee of the Colorado legislature is expected to consider HB 1235 today to authorize "second-parent adoption." We urge the committee to approve the bill, using the standard yardstick for family law: "the best interests of the child."

Realistically, the measure, by Rep. Alice Madden, D-Boulder, will normally affect only children who have at least one custodial parent in a same-sex relationship. That's because Colorado's current procedure for "step-parent adoption" requires the stepparent to be legally married to the child's parent. Any other parent, if one exists, must have relinquished his or her rights.

This procedure works fine for heterosexual couples. But it is a "Catch-22" for gay or lesbian couples because the non-custodial partner can't adopt the child unless he or she marries the custodial partner - and Colorado doesn't allow same-sex marriages.

Like it or not, children are already being raised in same-sex-couple households in Colorado. Sometimes these are children conceived by one partner in a previous marriage; sometimes they are children who a lesbian mother conceived by artificial insemination; and occasionally they may be children legally adopted by a single gay or lesbian adult - as is already permitted by Colorado law.

But because Colorado law prohibits homosexual marriages - or even the civil unions proposed by Rep. Tom Plant, D-Nederland, in a bill already defeated in the House last week - the children in such relationships can suffer. Consider a real case in which one woman conceived a child by artificial insemination at the behest of her lesbian partner. When the second woman later decided to break off the relationship, she had no obligation to support the child brought into the world at her urging.

Likewise, children in same-sex unions have no inheritance rights in the estate of the non-custodial partner except for what might be provided in that partner's will. Wills, of course, can be changed if the partner breaks off the relationship.

Giving a child two legal parents means both have a legal obligation to support the child. It also means there are two persons who can make the child a dependent on a health insurance policy, two persons from whom the child would be entitled to receive Social Security benefits if that parent dies, and two persons for whom the child could maintain a wrongful-death civil lawsuit if a parent is killed in an accident.

Madden's bill, quite properly, doesn't give gay couples any rights they don't now have. It gives the children of such unions the same rights that the children of heterosexual unions now have. Whatever your views of same-sex relationships, HB 1235 clearly is in the best interests of children who, through no fault of their own, are being raised in such relationships.

URL for Colorado legislature: http://www.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/house/members/index.htm

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