Protect yourself

Your marriage is legally valid today. These steps protect you if courts, hospitals, employers or family members ever try to ignore it.

• Get two or three certified copies of your marriage certificate from the county probate court where you married. Keep one somewhere outside your home.
• Write wills that name each other. A will does not depend on anyone recognizing your marriage.
• Sign a durable financial power of attorney for each other.
• Sign an Alabama advance directive naming your spouse as your health care proxy, and give your doctors a copy.
• Check beneficiaries on life insurance, retirement accounts and bank accounts. These override a will.
• Title shared property jointly with right of survivorship: your home, cars, business interests.
• If you run a business together, put ownership and succession in writing in your operating agreement.

• Get a court judgment of parentage or adoption for the non-biological parent, even if both of you are on the birth certificate. A birth certificate is a record; a court judgment is much harder to challenge across state lines.
• Name a guardian for your kids in your wills.
• Keep copies of adoption decrees and birth certificates with your travel documents.
• Give schools and doctors a signed authorization listing both parents.
• Find other families who get it. PFLAG meets in person and online; see Parents, families and allies below.

• Know your passport situation before you renew or travel. New passports show sex assigned at birth. Check the State Department's current guidance on existing passports before you mail yours in, since you may not get it back the same.
• Keep certified copies of any court order for a name or gender change, and your amended documents.
• Ask your pharmacy and doctor about refills and backup supply, and whether your insurer has changed coverage for 2026 or 2027.
• If your kid is on Medicaid or CHIP, talk to their clinic now about what the federal rule starting Oct. 13 means for them. Read the explainer.
• Save a legal help contact in your phone before you need it (see below).

• Turn on two-factor login for email, banking and social accounts.
• Use an end-to-end encrypted messenger like Signal for sensitive conversations, and turn on disappearing messages when it matters.
• Lock down health apps and review what period, pharmacy and fitness apps share.
• Review who can see your posts, your tagged photos and your location on social media.
• Write down what happened if you face discrimination at work, school, a store or with police: date, time, names, witnesses, screenshots. Then call a legal group.
• Know your chosen family. Have two people who know your wishes and can reach your documents.

For deeper digital privacy help, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Surveillance Self-Defense guides are free and plain-spoken.