By Dawn Wolfe Gutterman
Brooke Kilyanek lives with her partner Emily Sippola and their five-month-old baby, Sanna, in Washtenaw County. Kilyanek is there when Sanna wakes up every morning, and is there to help put her to bed every night. As far as Sanna knows, she has two mothers, both of whom love her very much.
However, in the eyes of Michigan law, Brooke Kilyanek might as well be a stranger to her daughter. Why? Because she's the wrong gender.
Kilyanek and Sippola feel this law isn't just bad for them – it's also bad for their daughter, and a new study supports their belief.
The children of same-sex couples deserve the same protections that marriage offers to the children of opposite-sex couples, according to a report published in the July issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
"We conclude that civil marriage is beneficial to children, regardless of the gender of the parents, because it strengthens families," Dr. Ellen C. Perrin, one of the authors of the report and chair of Pro-Family Pediatricians, stated in a press release. "Legislation seeking to deny same-sex families and their children the same legal rights and protections guaranteed to all other two-parent families leads to a host of health care deprivations: limited hospital visitation, inability to authorize treatment, inadequate insurance coverage and other obstacles to health care and financial security for same-sex parents and their children."
While Perrin told BTL that there are no studies examining the effects of discriminatory marriage laws on children, the Kilyanek-Sippola family and a separated mother of a pre-teen Michigan girl all say equal marriage laws would make their lives easier.
'You can't both be Mom'
Both Sippola and Kilyanek are painfully aware of Kilyanek's tenuous legal relationship to their daughter.
Prior to Sanna's birth, the couple consulted an attorney and drew up a document called a delegation of parental authority.
"That document allows Brooke to make legal decisions for Sanna with the exception of putting her up for adoption or taking her out of the country. So she can make medical decisions for Sanna and she can make schooling decisions for Sanna when they come up," Sippola said.
However, the delegation of parental authority has to be re-done, and re-notarized, every six months; something the couple will be paying for until Sanna reaches her eighteenth birthday.
"I know that hospitals and physicians and any sort of medical provider can ignore any document pretty much you put in front of them if they want to," Sippola said. "There's no law that says that they have to follow them, which is really frustrating."
A visit to urgent care when Sanna was about a month old gave the couple another reminder of Kilyanek's tenuous legal relationship with their child.
"We were both there and the doctor we saw was very confused, and she said, 'Who's Mom?' and we said, 'We both are,' and she said, 'You can't both be Mom,'" Kilyanek said. "It was uncomfortable, and sort of surprising, because it wasn't relevant if she was a biological child of either or us or not."
Other frustrations the couple face are having to pay taxes for the health insurance that Sippola's employer provides Kilyanek and the fact that, were Kilyanek to pass on and leave anything to her daughter in her will, Sanna would be taxed as though the two had no relationship. In addition, since domestic partner benefits aren't offered by all employers, the couples' career decisions will be limited to choosing employers that will recognize their family – unlike opposite-sex married couples, who don't have such constraints.
Kilyanek is also aware that, should the couple separate, she would have no legal rights to the daughter she is helping to raise and support.
"Right now it doesn't seem like it would ever be an issue and I hope it never would be but it does worry me, and it worries me that I can't have any legal right to her, to be her parent. I mean it's scary and it's also really frustrating because it just doesn't make any sense to me," she said.
Custody issues
While the Kilyanek-Sippola family worries about protecting both parents' legal relationship with their daughter, another parent, "Laurie" (who asked that real names and identifying information not be used), is dealing with being separated from the child she helped raise for more than seven years.
Laurie was a stay-at-home mom almost from the time that their daughter "Susan" was born, while her ex supported the family. However, that all changed about a year ago, when partner "Kathy" decided to end the relationship.
"We'd been having some problems and she said she didn't want to be together anymore, and we went to mediation and then, all of a sudden, she decided that she was moving in [with her family across the state] and that she was taking our daughter."
Fortunately, Laurie was able to obtain a second parent adoption of Susan when Washtenaw County judges were still permitting them. Because of that, Laurie is able to see her daughter every other week, and she and Kathy are working through the Friend of the Court to determine who will have eventual custody of Susan.
However, when it came to the division of the couple's property, Laurie wasn't so lucky. Since their home was in Kathy's name, Kathy sold it and refused to share any of the proceeds with Laurie.
"I walked out the door with basically what I could carry," Laurie said.
If the couple had been able to legally marry, Laurie said, "I think that the custody thing probably would have worked out differently, and I feel the sale of the house certainly wouldn't have been handled in the fashion that it was."
Laurie and her ex were together for more than 15 years.
Right now, though, Laurie is most concerned about Susan's well being.
"I'm hoping for, you know, something more equitable for my daughter," Laurie said. "I don't feel as the primary care parent that for the seven and a half years of her life that seeing me every other weekend is in her best interest."
While same-sex parents struggle to overcome discriminatory laws whether they are together or separated, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics their children are faring just as well as children raised by opposite-sex couples.
Asked about the anti-gay right's claims that they oppose marriage equality to protect children, Perrin replied, "I would say that they're wrong. … Believe me, I'm totally aware of the fact that they use children as their 'reason' for opposing marriage rights for same-gender couples, but they really basically have no data."
For more information
For more information on efforts to protect children through second parent adoption in Michigan, visit the Coalition for Adoption Rights Equality at www.secondparentadoption.org.
The Lesbian Moms Network provides support and social opportunities for lesbian moms in Washtenaw County. A metro Detroit-area branch of the group includes gay dads. Visit www.lmnetwork.org.
COLAGE – Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere – provides support and social opportunities for children of LGBT parents. Visit www.colage.org.
