Turin court OKs two stepchild adoptions (2)

(ANSA) - Turin, May 27 - 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.