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Recognition of a family with two mothers; Recognition of an adoption made abroad in Greece; Decision 1407/2025 of the Athens Court of First Instance.

With decision 1407/2025, the Athens Court of First Instance finally gave a happy ending to the struggle of two mothers for the recognition of their family in Greece. The family’s legal struggle (see https://www.kathimerini.gr/society/562736410/stin-eyropi-eimaste-oikogeneia-edo-tipota/) began in 2021, when they first appealed to the court asking for recognition of the adoption by which the second mother adopted the first mother’s biological children in Germany, where the family lived, so that they would legally constitute children of both of them. Up to the Court of Appeal, the answer the family received was that “Greece is not ready for families like ours“. After the enactment of the Marriage Equality Law, the family came back with a new application, claiming that the reform of the legal framework constituted a new factual circumstance that justified the filing of a new application despite the final rejection of the previous one by the Court of Appeal.

The Athens Court of First Instance, after hearing the application, accepted that “any refusal to recognise the validity of the abovementioned German judgment in the Greek territory, of which both the applicants and their minor children retain their nationality, would be prejudicial to the real interest of the latter, which prevails over public policy. That being so, according to the social research carried out in the proceedings before the German court, the second applicant is actively involved in bringing up the minors, interacts well with them and the minors have formed a relationship with both their parents of the same sex, such that, if they were to be disturbed, their mental world and their normal psychosocial development would be affected and, therefore, the difference in the composition of the family in question compared with the normal family structure cannot be to the detriment of the minors’ real interests. Since there is no reason to preclude recognition of the validity of the abovementioned German judgment, the application must be granted as well as being well founded in substance and the validity of that judgment must be recognised in Greece”.

The importance of that judgment, which ultimately took almost five years of litigation to obtain, is twofold:

On the one hand, it verifies the fact that since the enactment of the Marriage Equality Law, same-sex families established abroad cannot be considered contrary to public policy. And in view of the rise of far-right rhetoric in public debate, the defence of the “acquis” by the courts is essential. Equally important is the fact that recognition is directly linked to the interests of minor children.

On the other hand, the decision fills a “gap” in the law, which concerns families who had already applied to the courts for recognition before the law was enacted. In other words, it confirms as the correct procedural route the filing of a new application on the basis of new facts constituted by the legislative change. This means that if proceedings had been initiated before the new law and there are negative decisions, same-sex families do not have to exhaust the legal remedies against them (appeal, cassation- appeal, etc.) but can start again from the beginning.

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svgProtection of LGBTQI+ children and adolescents—The vague concept of the best interests of the child as a vehicle (once again) for the protection of LGBTQI children and adolescents.