Effective January 1, 2020, California’s Uniform Parentage Act expands access to the Parentage Opportunity Program, reflecting the diversity of today’s families.

The Uniform Parentage Act, as amended in 2018, permits different-sex parents or same-sex parents who conceive through assisted reproduction to use the Voluntary Declaration of Parentage process to establish legal parentage. It extends the parental relationship protection beyond the children of an unmarried birth parent and the only possible genetic father to include the children of different-sex and female same-sex parents when the child is born by sperm or egg donation by a donor who is not the spouse of the birth parent.

Parents using a surrogacy agreement are not eligible to sign a Declaration because the parent giving birth must be one of the parents to sign the form. Parentage is defined as the recognition of a parent’s legal relationship to a child.