The law on adoption in Scotland currently only allows married couples to adopt together as a couple, both becoming the adopted child's legal parents.

When same-sex couples, or unmarried mixed-sex couples, apply to adopt a child, while the couple are assessed as carers, only one of them can legally adopt the child, so that the child has only one legal parent.

A proposed change in the law would mean that when a couple applies to adopt, if they are successful in their application, they will both become the adopted child’s legal parents (whether they are mixed-sex or same-sex, and whether they are married, civil-partnered, or cohabiting).

The proposed changes would also allow same-sex step-parent adoption, so that the same-sex partner of the child’s birth parent could adopt their partner’s child.