Family Day this year marks happy changes for the LGBT community, which allow them to start a family in Israel. What are the options available to same-sex couples who wish to expand their family?
In the past, the accepted way of bringing children into the world was within a family unit of a father and mother who married each other with the aim of starting a family.
In today's reality and modern lifestyle, there are many types of families.
This year's Family Day marks happy changes for the LGBT community: at the beginning of the year, Minister of Health Uriel Bosso announced a new outline under which LGBT people will be able to bring children into the world through a surrogate in Israel, and recently it was even decided in the Supreme Court that same-sex couples are eligible to adopt children.
So how do we prepare ahead of time for expanding the family and what is important to know?
Shared parenting agreement
One of the options is shared parenting, a relatively new concept in Israeli society, as well as in the entire world.
Co-parenting is usually a relationship between a man and a woman, who act as biological parents to a shared child, but they do not live as a couple and do not run a joint household.
The family structure is of two parents living in two separate houses.
When a man and a woman who are not partners want to have a child together, they sign a co-parenting agreement.
The agreement is made up of two parts - the first part regulates the period of pregnancy until the birth, and the second part regulates what happens from the moment the child is born and refers to the issue of alimony and the division of stay times.
In addition to LGBT couples, there are quite a few heterosexual couples who bring children into the world through co-parenting.
Father and daughter, photo: Getty Images
Surrogacy procedure
Even before it was determined that the state would fund a surrogacy procedure for homosexual couples, this option was open only to wealthy couples, since the surrogacy procedure conducted abroad was extremely expensive and resulted in many LGBT couples having to give up the dream of having a child, due to the high cost .
The meaning of funding a surrogacy procedure in Israel for homosexual couples, is that the state recognizes the family structure of father and father, when usually same-sex couples give birth to a child through sperm donation.
In the case of surrogacy, in order for the two spouses (who gave birth to a child through sperm donation) to be registered as the parents of the newborn, one must contact the family court to obtain a "judicial parentage order".
The order will be issued on the condition that the non-biological parent is the spouse (actual or former) of the biological parent and they run a joint household together.
The condition is that both parents function together as the full parents of the child, and the child does not have another parent registered as a parent.
The application for a judicial parentage order must be submitted within 3 months from the date of birth.
adoption
Until the Supreme Court's landmark ruling, same-sex couples were not eligible to adopt.
The Supreme Court ruled that the question of the competence of couples of the same sex to adopt a child was not at all before the legislator, and that the purpose of the adoption law is the best interest of the child to grow up in a family unit that will give the child stability and security.
Through this ruling, another possibility was opened for same-sex couples to start a family, after the court interpreted the language of the law according to the changing reality of life, in which there are different structures of families.
A couple of men by the beach, photo: Jupiterimages
separation agreement
If a joint parenting agreement is drawn up, in the event of a separation, the provisions set forth in it regarding the division of stay times and alimony will continue to apply.
In the event of a dispute, appropriate claims can of course be submitted to the Family Court.
In any other case, separation between the parents is no different from separation in a heterosexual family.
The division of property matters, the issue of alimony and the division of time spent with the shared children must be regulated.
And what about food
?
A person's obligation to support his minor children arises from the Family Law Amendment Law (Alimony), 1959. The Alimony Law provides an answer to the issue of alimony within the framework of the traditional family, but what happens when two women separate? The personal law by virtue of which the father is obligated to support his children does not apply on women. In one of the cases when the court was required to rule on this issue, it examined the relationship between the women not according to personal law but by virtue of contract law. The court examined whether there was a contractual obligation between the two, even though they did not sign a cohabitation agreement and the defendant did not adopt the child.
A contractual obligation can also exist verbally or by way of conduct.
At the end of the day, the court obliged the non-biological mother to pay child support.
The aforementioned will apply accordingly and with the necessary changes to father and father as well.
Dalit attorney Yaniv Messer, expert in family law
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