The Turin court of appeals on
Friday green-lit stepchild adoptions in two separate cases
involving two different lesbian couples.
This means the partners in the couple can adopt each
other's biological children, so that the kids will have a legal
guardian in case the biological parent dies or becomes
incapacitated.
The first case involves an Italian woman wishing to adopt
the five-year-old child of her wife, whom she married in Iceland
in 2015.
The second involves two Italian women who have been living
together since 2007 and married in Denmark in 2014. They each
had a baby via artificial insemination and wish to adopt each
other's biological children, now aged five and seven years.
Both couples' adoption requests had been turned down by a
lower court.
Italy's brand-new civil unions law, which extends to
committed gay couples some of the same rights and protections
heterosexual married couples currently enjoy, does not cover
stepchild adoptions but leaves it up to the courts to decide on
a case-by-case basis.
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