Bureaucracy

We just got the second-parent adoption forms in the mail from our social worker, and spent an hour filling out a detailed financial history as well as a personal history. Stephanie describes it like applying for a mortgage, but more so. Fortunately, we had all of the paperwork together from our investigating mortgage options a few months ago, so it went pretty quickly. And happily, everything is absolutely tickety-boo on paper as well as in real life, even though my income last year was pretty low due to the fact that I was working adjunct gigs for three of the four academic quarters. Stephanie gleefully filled out "PhD" for her educational level. We even have life insurance!

The most fun had with the forms was the spot for "marriage time/place" wherein we got to fill not one, not two, but THREE separate pieces of information: 1/3/2004 (civil union, Highgate, VT); 8/14/07 (state registered domestic partnership, Seattle, WA); 12/29/08 (marriage, Mansfield, CT). That totally did not fit on the line, which was small to begin with.

Basically, this means we are so married that we make the convenant marriage concept look wimpy. When we went to a presentation on legal protection for same-sex families, there were a couple of lawyers who incidentally specialized in divorce and separation. They kept asking around the table, "So who has obtained [form of protection X]?" and we were the couple who consistently raised our hand to absolutely everything. (In addition to the above, we also obtained powers of attorney for one another, should we travel outside of the states that recognize our civil union, our marriage, or our state-recognized domestic partnership.) The lawyers giving the presentation were rather emphatically recommending AGAINST any of these legal marriage/marriage-like contract options, save the state SSDP and powers of attorney, due to the difficulty of dissolution. To legally separate, I'm pretty sure we would have to reside in two different locations for at least a year each.

To which I say, it's a good thing that we have no intention of dissolving any of our unions. :) I'd marry Stephanie all over again given the chance... although I think by now we've pretty much collected all the legal forms of recognition we can possibly obtain!

I still need to get a physical evaluation from my primary care physician (to record that I do not have any health problems), but otherwise, major paperwork that we can do in advance is taken care of. We're also sending off a check to our lawyer to file with the court! Hurray! The home visit by the social worker and the physical examination of the baby have to wait until the baby gets here, obviously, but we've picked out both the social worker and the pediatrician.