Legal security for families is critical, especially now. While New York has made significant strides towards protecting the myriad of family structures that exist in our state, there’s always more work to do!
The Rights Act Initiating Security and Equality for Children, known as RAISE Children, aims to protect all New York families by creating and codifying broader, more streamlined paths to parental recognition. If enacted, RAISE Children would:
- Establish clear criteria for various presumptions of parentage,
- Create a streamlined adoption process for people who are already parents under New York law (“Confirmatory Adoption”)
- Codify a New York court’s ability recognize that children sometimes have more than two parents, and
- Permit courts to grant multi-parent adoption petitions
