Delaware has become the latest state to show its commitment to protecting all children, no matter how their families formed. Its updated laws give children in all families, including those with LGBTQ parents and those born through assisted reproduction, clear paths to secure legal parentage.
Delaware Governor Matt Meyer (D) signed the new parentage bill (SB 250) into law on June 9; it will go into effect on December 6, 2026. Those who testified for the bill included members of COLAGE, the only national organization by and for people with LGBTQ+ parents and/or caregivers. Jordan Wilson, executive director of COLAGE, called the move “a victory for all children and families in Delaware,” explaining, “By modernizing its laws to better reflect and protect today’s families, Delaware has set an example for states across the country. Every child deserves the security and stability that comes with a legally recognized relationship with parents who love and care for them.”
The new laws also, among other things, remove gendered terms “to ensure equal treatment of children born to same-sex couples,” update provisions regarding surrogacy “to reflect recent scientific, legal, and cultural developments in surrogacy practice,” and similarly clarify provisions around de facto parentage (when someone other than a legal parent functions as a parent for a significant period of time), both of which had already been legal in Delaware.
Additionally, children with parents of any gender or marital status will be able to have relationships to their parents secured via voluntary acknowledgments of parentage (VAPs): simple, free forms that can be completed at the hospital immediately after a birth (or later) to establish legal parentage. While all states are required by federal law to have such forms for unmarried different-sex couples, Delaware will become the 16th state that explicitly allows parents of any gender or marital status to access them, per the Movement Advancement Project.
Overall, the legislation better aligns state laws with the 2017 Uniform Parentage Act (UPA), model legislation first developed by the non-partisan Uniform Law Commission in 1973, and updated several times since for clarity, ways of family formation, and so that parentage laws remain constitutional. Delaware is now the latest of a growing number of states to enact comprehensive parentage legislation based on or substantially similar to the 2017 UPA.
For more about the need to update parentage legislation around the U.S., see my interview with Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy at GLAD Law, for a look at the progress in parentage laws made in 2025, and my 2024 interview with Crozier and Stephanie Jones, founder of the Michigan Fertility Alliance (MFA), about the broad coalition that helped Michigan successfully update its parentage laws. I also recently spoke with COLAGE Chief Legal and Policy Officer Meg York about her organization’s work on this and other topics.
Children in all types of families will benefit from Delaware’s updated parentage laws, which facilitate clear and secure legal connections to the parents who love and care for them.