Family Formation

Adoption

The past president of the California Academy of Adoption Lawyers/ California Academy of Family Formation Attorneys, Diane Goodman is a leading expert in the field of same-sex parenting. Ms. Goodman has successfully handled hundreds of traditional adoptions, adult adoptions and step-parent adoptions.

The Law Firm of Goodman & Metz assists couples in creating families by adoption, screening potential birth parents and providing guidance on significant but often overlooked issues such as allowable birth mother expenses and identifying potential birth fathers.

We also prepare the paperwork necessary to terminate an absent parent’s parental rights when needed to complete an adoption.

We are available to assist parents with the adoption of children born in the state of California and those children born out of state as well.

Egg Donation and Sperm Donation

We assist couples in creating legal family relationships for their children and assist in surrogacy, adoption, egg and sperm donation agreements. We also provide mediation services to help determine who will be the legal parents, making the process of family formation easier.

Egg Donation agreements are required by most doctors before procedures begin. We clarify the status of parental rights, particularly the rights that the egg donor is giving up.

An important note on a California Supreme Court Decision: The Supreme Court has ruled that lesbians living together, one of whom had provided the egg, and the other of whom had given birth, are both legal parents of the resulting child.

(KM vs. EG (2005) 37 Cal 4th 130)

Regarding sperm donation, we draft agreements to determine the legal status of the parents and clarify the intent of who will or will not be a parent prior to conception.

Finally, we clarify the role of surrogates in helping families create children and provide legal recognition of parentage for the intended parents while terminating the parental rights of the surrogate.

Judgment of parentage

We assist with the paperwork to attain judgments of parentage confirming that children conceived by assisted reproduction are the legal parents.