So …. I just realized that my partner and I aren’t actually married.
I never think about it. We had a ceremony (I wore a green dress I made myself, family was there, we had a cake that looked like a chess board). We pledged our love (with music that we edited ourselves so we would walk down the aisle … yes, we both walked, we could express ourselves). We live together and take care of each other, but we never turned in the paperwork to be legally married. We thought about it, but we decided against it. We’re not really into the whole our-relationship-isn’t-valid-until-it’s-recognized-by-the-government kind of people. We met back in undergrad more than ten years ago and we’ve been married for four years. On a day-to-day basis we don’t think about the legalities of our relationship … we just are.
As we travel along our adoption journey however I’m noticing our strange we are. I don’t want to adopt as a “single” person because I’m not single. I would like birthparents that are considering our family to do just that: consider our family (one He, one Her and one pup).
We could just go down to the courthouse and file the correct paperwork and be done with it, but I’d rather not. It’s not who we are. Are there any other options? Do we have to be legally married to be able to adopt together?
Parents of Color Seek Newborn to Adopt 