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When Hannah and Chelsea Shamy-Calder welcome their daughter next month, both women will become mothers for the first time — but only one of them will have full legal parentage rights.
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That’s because state law hasn’t kept up with advances in assisted reproduction techniques, creating a gap for families like the Shamy-Calders, who created an embryo with Hannah’s egg and donor sperm for Chelsea to carry.
In North Carolina, that means Hannah Shamy-Calder must apply for what is colloquially known as a “stepparent adoption” to have full parentage rights to her daughter.
Milan Pham, a founding member of NicholsonPham Law in Durham, has seen this issue hundreds of times among her own clients, she told The News & Observer.
“Depending on how you became a parent, you might not even have legal parentage,” Pham said. “It’s complicated.”
North Carolina considers someone to legally be a child’s parent if they fall under any of three categories, according to Pham:
But that only provides statutory parentage, meaning North Carolina recognizes the parent’s legal rights to their child, she said. A court order ensures portable parentage rights — meaning other states will recognize the parent’s legal rights.
“We’re a modern society and people move,” Pham said. “We travel. You could be with your family in another state and something happens and both of you need to be able to make decisions as legal parents.”
That’s where the “stepparent adoption” process comes into play. That can include a required report to the court, which may include a home visit, if the child is under 2 years old, according to Pham. In many cases, the home visit can be waived, she said.
That was the case for ACLU of North Carolina attorney Ivy Johnson, who said her wife was able to get the home visit requirement waived for their child in Durham County.
“We didn’t have to do the home visit because they acknowledged, yes, we’ve been married this whole time,” Johnson said. “But we still had to pay something like $1,500 to even start the process … It is sort of like putting a price tag on being a family and having legal rights to your own child.”
Between the costs of filing the required paperwork in court and obtaining an attorney, obtaining full parental rights can cost thousands of dollars. The Shamy-Calders said they expect to spend about $4,500, but are lucky to work for a company that will reimburse them as part of their employee benefits.
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“We’ve already invested thousands of dollars to just have one child together,” Hannah Shamy-Calder said. “Why can’t we just have our full parental rights by the time that child is born?”
And that has, the Shamy-Calders admit, added mixed emotions to what should have been a joyful time in their lives.
“I am thrilled. I am counting down the weeks,” Hannah Shamy-Calder wrote in a letter to North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson. “And underneath all of that, there’s a current of anger that I didn’t expect to carry into this. Anger that on top of everything every new parent handles, my family has to prove itself to the state in a way other families never will.”
That frustration drove Hannah Shamy-Calder not only to write the letter to Jackson and four legislators, but to share it last month on her personal Instagram page and the family Instagram page she and her wife run. The response from their more than 36,000 followers was instantaneous.
“It actually opened up some conversations with people who have gone through this,” Hannah Shamy-Calder said. “I received lots of engagement on some of those stories, and I think that spoke to me that my thinking was correct that a lot of people just did not know about this.”
Jackson’s office responded with its congratulations, but explained Jackson didn’t have control over the law and it would be best to reach out to legislators, she said. Jackson’s office didn’t respond to The News & Observer’s request for comment for this article.
Hannah Shamy-Calder said she has written to her representatives in the General Assembly and plans to write additional letters as her family continues on this journey.
“We want them to realize what we uniquely have to go through that just some people do not, and the expenses of it as well,” she said.
The Shamy-Calders have gotten a positive response from several legislators, including Sen. Haseeb Fatmi, a Democrat representing Granville and northern Wake counties, who indicated he “is willing to champion legislation for this,” according to Chelsea Shamy-Calder. Democratic Rep. Marcia Morey of Durham has also shared her support, Shamy-Calder said.
In the meantime, families like the Shamy-Calders and Johnson’s will have to contend with the stepparent adoption process.
“I’m not the only mother in this state living this,” Hannah Shamy-Calder wrote to Jackson. “I don’t intend to be the last one asking you to notice.”
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