Adoption rights granted to unmarried N.Y. couples.

New York's highest court has broadened the definition of family by allowing gay people and unmarried heterosexuals to adopt and raise children with their partners.

The 4-3 court of appeals opinion clears the way for these children to have the same benefits that arc granted to children adopted by married couples. For instance, the children can receive Social Security and health and life insurance benefits under either adoptive parent's name. They also gain legal recognition of their relationship to the people who raise them.

Second-parent adoptions, as they are known among family law practitioners, were at issue in the two consolidated cases before the New York Court of Appeals. (In re Jacob, In re Dana, Nos. 195, 196 (N.Y. Nov. 2, 1995).

In addition to the New York Court or Appeals, high courts in Vermont, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia have recognized these adoptions. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has barred them. (See Gay Couples Can Adopt, TRIAL, Sept. 1995, at 107.

New York law allows single people--regardless of sexual orientation--to adopt children, but the law bars joint adoptions by two umnarried people. The cases before the court involved a man who sought to adopt the biological child of his unmarried female partner and a lesbian who wanted to adopt her partner's biological daughter, whom they had raised together since the girl's birth. The daughter was conceived through artificial insemination.

The majority based its decision in the cases on a "best interests of the child" standard.

"The adoption statute must be applied in harmony with the humanitarian principle that adoption is a means of securing the best possible home for a child," wrote Chief Judge Judith Kaye. "To rule otherwise would mean that the thousands of New York children actually being raised in homes headed by two unmarried persons could have only one legal parent, not the two who want them."

Dissenting Judge Joseph Bellacosa pointed out that New York's adoption laws do not technically allow second-parent adoptions. Quoting New York's adoption law, he wrote that joint adoption is allowed by "married" spouses who adopt a child "together."

"Words of such precise import and limitation are not merely talismanic and may not be rendered superfluous, as the majority has done here," Bellacosa said. "Under the [majority's] newly fashioned theory rooted in ambiguity, any number of people who choose to five together--even those who may not cohabit--could be allowed to adopt a child together."

He warned the court's majority against their legislating "under the guise of interpretation."