Confirmatory Adoptions

Adoption Attorneys Helping Couples Who Have Used Medical Assisted Reproductive Technology To Have A Child

The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 2.3 percent of all infants born in the United States each year are conceived using assisted reproductive technology. Increasingly, and particularly for gay and lesbian couples, the child born is not genetically related to one of the persons presumed to be a parent. This is most often due to a couple conceiving a child using sperm, an egg, or an embryo from a donor.

In 2022, with the assistance of Grob & Eirich, LLC, the Colorado General Assembly enacted the confirmatory adoption statute. Also known as Marlo’s Law, confirmatory adoptions make it much easier for the non-genetic parent, or person who did not give birth, to adopt a child born through assisted reproduction. This law eliminates barriers for parents who conceive using assisted reproduction. As a result, families built through assisted reproductive technology, many of who are non-traditional families, no longer have to go through a burdensome, expensive, and invasive adoption process to establish the parent-child legal relationship. Unlike all other adoptions in Colorado, the confirmatory adoption does not require a homestudy, criminal and child abuse records checks, a minimum residency period, court appearances, and complicated filing forms.  Rather, the law creates a simplified and more affordable and expedited process for these families to establish a legal parent-child relationship, and ensures equal protections for both parents that will be recognized in all states.

Our firm’s representation in this area of the law includes:

• Personal attention to evaluating and providing informed objective counsel about whether a confirmatory adoption is warranted given the nature of the child’s conception;
• Drafting and filing the confirmatory adoption pleadings;
• Expeditiously completing this process and obtaining an adoption order often within 30 days; and
• Amending the child’s birth certificate, if needed, to add the adoptive parent’s name.

To Learn More About Confirmatory Adoption, Contact Our Firm Today.

We offer well-informed and empathetic consultations at our Lakewood office.