The federal and state governments agree on adoption assistance law

Berlin (epd) . The federal and state governments have settled their dispute under the adoption assistance law. They agreed in the mediation committee of the Bundesrat and Bundestag on Thursday to lift the controversial obligation to provide advice on stepchild adoption for lesbian parents, as the spokeswoman for the Federal Council announced in Berlin on Friday.

The obligation to seek advice does not apply to lesbian couples if the child is born into a marriage or a long-term relationship. The law, which the Bundestag had already passed, provides for an obligation to provide advice to adoption agencies in the case of stepchild adoptions, i.e. if one partner wants to adopt the other's child.

Since in lesbian marriages or civil partnerships both partners do not automatically become parents when one has a child, they have so far been forced to adopt stepchildren. The majority of the federal states saw the obligation to provide advice for these couples as an additional form of discrimination and refused to approve the bill by Federal Family Minister Franziska Giffey (SPD). The federal government then called the mediation committee at the beginning of December.

Further regulations of the Adoption Assistance Act are not in dispute. It guarantees adoptive parents a legal right to counseling, promotes open adoption with contacts between the adoptive parents and the child's family of origin, and prohibits adoptions abroad that are not arranged by specialist agencies. Its aim is to improve child protection in the event of adoptions and to make it more difficult to trade in children from abroad.

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