Chosen Family Law Center

We’re here for you! In these intense times, one way you can protect yourself and your family is by getting your legal paperwork in order. Read more about what you should do & share this information with your queer community: https://lnkd.in/eVdqnc69 **UPDATE January 24, 2025:?In implementing the?Executive Order issued regarding gender on January 20, the U.S. State Department has now frozen/suspended applications for passports with X gender markers, as well as any application with a request for a gender change on existing passports. ?Submitting a passport application now with a gender marker request for X, or a change from the previous gender designation, may mean that your passport will be held indefinitely. ?Until there is clearer information, we advise caution in sending in an existing passport for renewal if you are requesting a gender marker change, or have had your gender marker changed on your passport in the past, as this may result in your passport being held indefinitely.** Chosen Family Law Center is proud to provide FREE legal services for low-income LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers. Get your name change documents in order to reflect your name and gender. Get your Will, power of attorney, and Advance Medical Directives in order. Start your Judgment of Parentage to protect your relationship to a non-biological child. We offer all these services for free to eligible clients. Learn more about eligibility & sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eEcxE9Af If you aren’t financially eligible or in our service area, we’d be happy to give you a referral to affordable paid services. Our community is deeply in need, and if you have support to offer, your donations will help us provide desperately needed security to those who are at risk: https://lnkd.in/gCpiHN67

Our Senior Legal Director Andy Izenson will be hosting an information session on Wednesday March 19 at the Hudson Valley LGBTQ+ Community Center in Kingston NY. Read on for more information! Trans Identity Documents in 2025: Threat Modeling and Solidarity Are you trans and confused about what to do with your identity documents under the current administration? Join us for a facilitated discussion with Andy Izenson, Senior Legal Director for Chosen Family Law Center. Andy will walk us through threat modeling - presenting several potential scenarios to assess the associated risks and considerations. Participants will have the opportunity to apply this modeling to their own circumstances in order to make informed decisions about how to proceed. While this session will provide information, it does not constitute legal counsel and should not be relied on as such. Note: For this event, masks will be required and provided. Wednesday, March 19th 7pm-8:30pm Hybrid: In person at the Community Center and online via Zoom Sign up here to receive a zoom link: https://lnkd.in/e9k7m3FQ

WOMXNS MARCH! This Saturday March 8 in NYC! 11am in Washington Square. Our Executive Director Diana Adams is speaking. Join us!

You can support the work our nonprofit is doing whether or not you can donate, by asking your employer to bring us in for a pride keynote! Let your employer know you want to see them reaffirm their commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and support for LGBTQIA+ rights.

Now is the time to think and act locally! With so many threats to our community, it’s more important than ever to step up into action and advocate for all forms of family! Do you want to bring multi-partner domestic partnership and/or relationship structure nondiscrimination laws to your City Council? We've created a free legislative toolkit so now you can propose expansive family legislation in your own cities and counties! Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/etJzKQ4M. The toolkit includes: step-by-step campaign guidance, model legislation and policy language, messaging and outreach templates, and coalition-building strategies. We are grateful to our coalition partners, Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition, Harvard Law’s LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic, Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy, and the Modern Family Institute, who drafted this open source guide with us.

Join us for a live webinar on Friday, February 28 from 12-2pm titled, "Families in Transition: Cultural Competency and Issue-Spotting in LGBTQ+ Family Practice" with speaker Andy Izenson, Esq. Senior Legal Director of Chosen Family Law Center. Register today at the link: https://bit.ly/4aVnJdI This workshop will provide cultural competency training and issue-spotting and practice tips for working with queer and transgender clients, with a particular focus on assisting transgender clients through divorce and separation. We hope to see you all there!

Did you know that Pride Month talks and CLEs are our biggest fundraiser of the year? Ask your employer to show their support for the LGBTQIA+ community by booking our Executive Director Diana Adams and/or Senior Legal Director Andy Izenson for a Pride talk! As employers move away from DEI in response to the current federal administration, hosting our attorneys for a Pride Talk or CLE is also a way for employers to show that their commitment to diversity is genuine and steadfast. Our attorneys are LGBTQIA+ thought leaders who regularly speak about current legal LGBTQIA+ issues around the world on topics including: the legal landscape related to transgender rights, family diversity and evolving family structure, same sex marriage, the Supreme Court and the fate of LGBTQIA+ Americans, the international LGBTQIA+ movement, and opportunities for corporate leadership with LGBTQIA+ employees. Reach out today by email [email protected]!

EXCITING NEWS! We’re proposing to the NYC Council on how to make NYC an LGBTQIA+ Sanctuary City! NYC must push back & resist unlawful federal mandates with new sanctuary laws to protect the safety of transgender people & LGBTQIA+ families as well as our democracy! We’re one of many organizations pushing back to protect our queer communities and civil liberties across the country, a hopeful story you may not be hearing. Following, sharing, and donating to groups like us helps fund the resistance! If you want to see this work continue, please consider setting up a monthly recurring donation, no matter how small, to fund the groups you want to see working to protect the issues most important to you in your city and state. The New York City Council reached out to us to invite our legislative proposals to protect LGBTQIA+ communities and diverse families in New York City. We submitted a legal brief last week that was 100 pages including our legal references! Our Executive Director Diana Adams and Senior Legal Director Andy Izenson will present to NYC Council this month to share expertise and insight on how they can expand and implement comprehensive protections for LGBTQIA+ and diverse families, making NYC a safe haven for all in these difficult times. We’ll be proposing that the New York City Council adopt an inclusive and consistent definition of “family”, multi-partner domestic partnership, and relationship structure & family status nondiscrimination laws that are similar to those we’ve been part of passing in California and Massachusetts. We’ll also advocate for strengthened sanctuary measures for LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers and suggest methods of doing so most effectively. This will not be open to the public, but we will keep you informed in our newsletter and social media, as they have given us permission to do. Please SHARE this good news and donate if you can!

IMPORTANT UPDATE ON PASSPORT CHANGES FOR TRANS AND NONBINARY COMMUNITY- PLEASE SHARE: Today, In implementing the?Executive Order issued regarding gender on January 20, the U.S. State Department has now frozen/suspended applications for passports with X gender markers, as well as any application with a request for a gender change on existing passports.?Submitting a passport application now with a gender marker request for X, or a change from the previous gender designation, may mean that your passport will be held indefinitely.?Until there is clearer information, we advise caution in sending in an existing passport for renewal if you are requesting a gender marker change, or have had your gender marker changed on your passport in the past, as this may result in your passport being held indefinitely. Follow Chosen Family Law Center for more resources and information. Full article on how to protect yourself as an LGBTQIA or polyamorous person: https://lnkd.in/efER9NKq

Yesterday’s Executive Orders and dramatic actions are media theater, intended to frighten us into submitting in advance. They are for the most part wildly unconstitutional or procedurally borked, but it’s hard to predict their effect at the level of individual queer and trans people trying to get services from individual government agency employees. This lack of information, chaos, and vague anxiety is designed to make you feel just how you’re feeling right now. Despair is a psyop and your only job is to resist it. Over the next little while, we’re probably going to get more data to analyze and draw inferences from. It’s important that we keep ourselves regulated, minimize the disinformation that we absorb, and keep our centers of gravity low. Our Executive Director Diana Adams will be holding a free lunch time zoom Q&A with Woodhull Freedom Foundation on Thursday, January 23rd at 12:30pm ET. Register HERE: https://lnkd.in/eDfzVvS2 Come with legal questions, come for a pep talk on resilience, come if you need community that cares about you. We’re not going anywhere. Our public voices, our joy, our wild self-expression, our loud queerness - this is all powerful resistance! We’re here to band together in collective resistance and collective rebellious joy with you.