Now that people of the same gender can legally marry in Arizona, the state's office of Vital Records is making some changes.
Firstly, the office will now be releasing death certificates to spouses in same gender marriages, Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble wrote in his director's blog this week.
Arizona law specifies the people that can get a certified copy of a death certificate. One of those categories is the decedents’ spouse, Humble wrote.
Now that Arizona recognizes the marriage of people of the same gender, the state has begun processing death certificates of all marriages, regardless of gender.
One aspect of vital records that is less clear and requires more research is birth certificates. When a birth mother has a same gender spouse, the state previously would not allow both parents to have their names on the birth certificate.
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Now that gays and lesbians can marry, state officials are researching maternity and paternity statutes to determine whether it will now be legal to put both parents' names on the birth certificate, regardless of their gender.
Previously, same gender parents sometimes felt like they had to leave Arizona in order to feel secure about their legal rights as parents. Other states like California have long had what's known as "second-parent adoption" laws where a same gender parent can legally adopt the biological or adopted child of their partner.
Here's a story the Star ran about that subject in 2005, when a local couple reluctantly left Tucson so that they could both become legal parents of their son: http://tucson.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/nd-parent-curbs-driving-same-sex-couple-from-ariz/article_43f1b933-e62f-5436-b6ac-1fcbdf61c958.html
The state's Vital Records office also records adoptions, which may also be affected by the ruling, Humble wrote.
"Arizona law doesn’t prohibit people of the same gender from adopting children, but state law gives preference to a married man and woman over others," he wrote.
"We still don’t know if those criteria in law will eventually be affected. Since our team simply registers adoptions approved by the courts (ours is more of an administrative function), we’ll simply continue to record adoptions as they arrive."
