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Splitting the Tax Benefits Between Parenting Partners

With all the discussion going on around the U.S. Presidential election, its hard to tell who will win and who will lose – when it comes to income tax levels, that is.

Yet despite the uncertainty, new parenting partners should pay attention to the fact that they can take advantage of some tax breaks for parents.  The trickier question is – which of the parenting partners will take the breaks on their tax return?

A trickier answer is – how about both?

If the idea of both parenting partners taking a tax break for their child may sound a bit fishy, its actually very straightforward. Parents may qualify for several different tax breaks – among them a deduction for dependents, and a separate deduction for a claim as “Head of Household”.

As long as the parenting partner who provides the child’s primary residence (the “custodial parent”) agrees to waive their right to claim the deduction for dependents, the non-residential parenting partner may take this deduction. At the same time, the custodial parent can still claim the “Head of Household” deduction and several other deductions.

For more information on splitting the tax benefits between parenting partners, see our article on tax breaks for parenting partners.

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More Single Straight Men Seeking Fatherhood

Steven Harris with his 5 year old son, Ben.

Single women aren’t the only ones who are looking for opportunities to become a parent – a growing number of single men are finding creative ways to become fathers as well, as per this article on single men seeking fatherhood from ABC News:

At a lavish baby shower outside of Boston, there was no pregnant mom in sight. The diaper genie and burp cloths were for a 45-year-old middle school principal named Peter Gordon.

Gordon has been dating and searching for Ms. Right for more than two decades, but hasn’t found a wife. Yet, he badly wanted to start a family.

“I’m still hopeful,” he said. “Some people are lucky in love. I haven’t found luck yet. It’s not for lack of trying.”

Steven Harris, a 57-year-old lawyer from New York, found himself in the same predicament. He knew he wanted kids but didn’t have someone to have them with and said he felt a “profound sadness” about 15 years ago.

“I really felt like I really was missing something,” he said.

So Gordon and Harris, both heterosexual bachelors, made the decision to become dads on their own through surrogacy, using their sperm and a donor egg.

Gordon said he tried adoption before surrogacy but kept getting turned away.

“I called five different agencies and every one of them told me that either I would not be considered or that I would be at the bottom of the list because I was a single father,” he said.

Harris said he too was rejected from adoption agencies.

“Who is going to give their kid to a 50-year-old bachelor living in SoHo, you know? I wouldn’t,” he said.

So both Gordon and Harris turned to surrogacy.

“I didn’t want to wake up in five years when I’m over 50 and say, ‘if you’d just kind of done this earlier, you might have been able to use the energy and be able to kind of give the time that you can give,'” Harris said.

Stephanie Scott, the executive director of Simple Surrogacy in Dallas, helped set up the arrangement between Gordon and 24-year-old Sara Eaton, the surrogate Gordon ended up choosing. Scott said more and more of her clients are single, heterosexual men.

“Over the last few years it’s become the norm,” she said.

But when Harris decided to go the surrogacy route, his mother was appalled.

“She said, ‘Stevie, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Harris said.

That is, until he introduced her to baby Ben, who was born with the help of in-virto fertilization and another surrogate. Today, Ben is a 5-year-old spitfire and Harris is a busy dad.

“I get him ready for school, I take him to school, then I go to work and the babysitter picks him up at 3, and I come home at 6 and she leaves, so it’s really all me,” he said.

Making a family this way is not cheap, especially for Gordon, who discovered he was having twins. Like most men in his situation, he was responsible for Eaton’s medical bills.

“I’m looking at probably close to $85,000-$90,000,” he said. “I’m 100 percent sure that I’m going to be able to make it work.”

Both single dads acknowledge that their kids will have questions about their family situation one day. Harris said Ben has already started to ask him if he has a mother.

“I say ‘there are all kinds of families. There are families with two daddies and two mommies and a daddy and a mommy and we’re a kind of family with one daddy,’ and that’s fine for him now,” he said.

Both Gordon and Harris said they still have high hopes of one day finding a spouse.

“Dating is a snap,” Harris said. “Ben is a chick magnet.”

“Definitely want a wife,” Gordon said. “I definitely want that family, and a child on each arm, and walking to the park and a stroller with her and, I mean, who wouldn’t? I just think for me that would be ideal.”

But the wife will have to wait. Gordon’s twins, Olivia and Noah, were born six months ago and this single dad could not have been happier.

“To have what I’ve been wanting for many, many years now is here,” he said. “What an amazing miracle. It’s just unbelievable.”

Its great to see single men finding their own path to parenthood. However, while surrogacy is an established option, a price tag of around $100,000 is not feasible for many prospective fathers, nor does single parenthood necessarily provide the support that a parenting partnership can provide.

Dare we suggest that single men seeking to become dads might be better off looking for a parenting partner?

darren

California Considering Multiple Legal Parents

A new bill was introduced in the California State Assembly this summer to provide legal recognition for the fact that a child may, in practice, be raised by more than two parents.  In order to provide greater legal protection and security for children in these multiple-parent relationships, state Senator Mark Leno has introduced a bill that would allow judges to recognize a child’s additional parent, if it would be in the best interests of the child.

While some may have concerns on the redefinition of family, FamilyByDesign posits – if there is general opinion and research to support the idea that children are better off with two parents rather than one, in order to get the level of attention, care, and resources they need, would it not follow that a child with three loving, committed parents would not be even better off?

You can read more about the bill in the CA legislature in the LA Times here.