[News] [USA] Effectively Advocating for Transgender People’s Families

[Stephanie Stevens]

Human Rights Campaign, DC, USA


BACKSTORY BLOG

May 07, 2012 | Guest contributor

Category: Parenting, Protecting Your Family, Transgender

Effectively Advocating for Transgender People’s Families


This Guest Post comes from Elizabeth E. Monnin-Browder, co-editor of
Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy, and former GLAD
staff attorney:

Family law implicates some of our most intimate and important
relationships. Negotiating legal resolutions to family issues –
ending marriages or other long term relationships, protecting
parentage, advocating for children’s rights, or ensuring that
posthumous intentions are respected, to name a few – when the people
involved are under the stress and strain of often painful, major life
changes is a high stakes endeavor.

The stakes are even higher for transgender people and their families.
You are particularly vulnerable in family courts due to a lack of
legal protections and recognition; ignorance about the reality of your
lives; bias, discrimination, and even outright hostility. You are not
just at risk of being treated badly – although that definitely happens
far too often – but you are also at risk of your family relationships
not being recognized and even being nullified for no other reason than
that you are transgender.

Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy aims to help
reverse the trend of injustice that transgender people encounter in
the family court system. It’s a user-friendly tool to educate lawyers
so they will be more confident and skillful in advocating for your
rights. Any transgender person who is planning a family, navigating
the dissolution of a relationship or a custody dispute, asserting
their rights as a transgender youth, or otherwise seeking to protect
their rights and those of their families should give their attorney a
copy of Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy.

I’m thrilled that Transgender Family Law includes contributions from
some of this country’s most well-respected experts on transgender
legal rights – folks like my co-editor Jennifer Levi, director of
GLAD’s Transgender Rights Project; Kylar Broadus, a founding board
member of the Transgender Law and Policy Center; and Shannon Price
Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and Deborah
Wald, who chairs NCLR’s National Family Law Advisory Council (to name
just a few).

Until the law and our legal system catches up with the lived
experiences of transgender people, it’s our hope that Transgender
Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy can help you and your
attorney more effectively navigate the family court system to best
protect your rights and your most cherished family relationships.

For more information or to purchase a copy of Transgender Family Law:
A Guide to Effective Advocacy visit
http://www.glad.org/transgender-family-law/

--

Elizabeth Monnin-Browder is now a litigation associate at the Boston
office of Ropes & Gray LLP. She was previously a staff attorney at
GLAD, and she is a former member of the Massachusetts Transgender
Political Coalition and a founding member of Massachusetts Transgender
Legal Advocates.


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All Rights Reserved

http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/effectively-advocating-for-transgender-peoples-families/