Diana Adams believes that “family” extends beyond the traditional nuclear family of Mom, Dad, two kids, and a dog to include other loving, mutually supporting families. 

Other valid “non-traditional families” include grandparents raising grandkids, friends living together and sharing finances longterm, couples choosing not to marry, same-sex couples, polyamorous families, and intentional communities. All of these families deserve the ability to form stable legally binding ties, and deserve to have their rights represented in court when necessary.

Ms Adams is active in the marriage reform movement, fighting to unbundle our rights from marriage, so that single people, unmarried couples, polyamorous people, LGBTQ people who are not permitted to marry, and intentional communities are not legally disadvantaged in terms of their taxes or ability to form family ties. Diana believes that as fewer and fewer Americans each year fit into the traditional heterosexual married nuclear family model, our government needs to respond by ensuring that these individuals in our evolving society are not disadvantaged.

Ms Adams represents clients throughout New York State facing LGBTQ or sexuality-related cases. Often New York State law does not provide consistent rights to same-sex couples or polyamorous families, but through creativity and knowledge of the current legal framework, Ms Adams can provide assistance with parenting agreements, estate planning for commingled finances of two or more unmarried people, second parent adoption (so that a nonbiological parent will have parental rights along with a biological parent), domestic partnership benefits, divorces of same-sex marriages from other states, transgender name changes, and more.

Ms Adams also supports clients in child custody cases in which their sexuality or alternative lifestyle, such as LGBTQ status or queer identity, polyamory, or involvement in kink/BDSM, is being inappropriately and unfairly conflated with immorality and emotional instability, and distracting from the true best interests of the child.  Ms Adams is a proud referral attorney for the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom’s Kink Aware Professionals. Her courtroom successes on behalf of parents whose sex lives are being used to shame and humiliate them by a former partner in court, and thereby threatening their parental rights, have earned her national recognition. She has spoken about these experiences at numerous venues including Yale Law School, the Manhattan LGBT Center, and many national conferences on sexuality. Her work has been noted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and New York Magazine, and on MTV and Current TV.