Philly LGBTQ couples are worried about their rights after Roe fell. So they’re turning to estate planning.

It was the pandemic that got Joncarl Lachman, 59, and his husband, Bob Moysan, 54, thinking about their wishes in the event something happened to them.

The Philadelphia couple went to an estate planner this year to update their decade-old wills, powers of attorney, and name a caretaker for their cats should Lachman and Moysan no longer be able to do the job. At the time, the move appeared to be a responsible but routine thing to do, Lachman said.

Then Roe v. Wade was overturned and the documents suddenly seem to have added importance.

“There’s nothing more personal than death,” said Lachman, who’s been with Moysan for more than two decades. “I want done what I want done, and Bob knows what I want done. I’m not interested in anybody else making decisions for me.”

Since Roe was overturned Friday, area attorneys specializing in LGBTQ law issues say they’ve seen a surge of families looking to enshrine parental rights, as well as decision-making powers on health and financial matters. Attorneys say families are focused on a section of Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in which he said the U.S. Supreme Court “should reconsider” cases dealing with contraception, same-sex relationships, and marriage equality, which also relied on the due process clause and the right to privacy in their legal reasoning.

Social media posts urging same-sex or nontraditional couples to file powers of attorney, living wills, and adoptions have gone viral; resource hubs for LGBTQ families, like the website Connecting Rainbows, report being flooded with information requests; and organizations like Philadelphia Family Pride have planned events to offer practical steps LGBTQ families can take and answer questions.

“To me, [the Roe reversal] is just a red flag that there’s more to come,” said Lynette Lawler, 67, who started thinking about bringing paperwork into her 21-year-old relationship with Michaele Brown, 69, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The couple, who married this month, now feel the pressure to finalize their powers of attorney in a post-Roe America.

Benjamin Jerner, with the Philadelphia firm Jerner Law Group PC, urges families not to panic because it would take time for a marriage challenge to reach the Supreme Court and it’s unlikely existing marriages would be invalidated, even if a challenge is successful. Still, he said, “concern is warranted.”

“The radical nature of the Dobbs decision should serve as a wake-up call that folks should put in place whatever legal protections they can, when they can,” Jerner said.

Estate planning is a bit of a misnomer, suggesting you need to have an accumulation of things to give away, but it can be best described as a batch of tools to make sure your health and financial wishes are laid out and executed by the person you want.

Even for heterosexual couples, a spouse’s instructions to a partner run the risk of being challenged if those directives are not in writing. Attorneys often reference Terri Schiavo, who entered a “persistent vegetative state” after going into cardiac arrest in 1990. Only 26, Schiavo had no living will and her supposed final wishes were the subject of a years-long legal battle between Schiavo’s husband and her parents.

According to Angela Giampolo, founding attorney of Giampolo Law Group, a durable power of attorney can offer couples more privileges than marriage alone, including access to bank accounts should a partner be traveling or ill. Contract-based documents can also grant decision-making powers to a nontraditional partner outside the United States.

“If you get hurt on the Great Wall of China, you’re not legally married,” said Giampolo, who has these documents for her wife. “You get nipped by a lion on safari in Tanzania, it’s illegal to be gay there. You don’t want to yell, ‘That’s my wife!’”

But with Thomas opening the door to revisit marriage equality, LGBTQ families are not only worrying about how they can maintain spousal rights, they’re also racing to enshrine their rights as parents.

Establishing parental rights in states like Pennsylvania is not a given for LGBTQ couples who have a “non-gestational” parent in the mix. Having a parent’s name on a birth certificate may not be enough to determine parentage, especially in a contentious split. Philadelphia resident Kimberly Emmons, 44, learned this firsthand after she divorced her wife. Emmons, the non-gestational parent, was suddenly unable to pick up her son from school.

“You’re not considered an equal in anything. Not even school,” said Emmons. “That’s my son, that’s my baby. What do you mean I don’t have any rights?”

The legal proceedings to determine parentage in custody disputes can be grueling. Mother’s Day cards or children’s drawings can be placed under a microscope in court. A “confirmatory adoption” or “second-parent adoption” is the only way to ensure universal recognition of parental rights.

“People need to confirm their parental rights through adoption, and I think that was always the case,” said Rebecca Levin Nayak, with the Jerner Law Group, post-Roe. “But it’s more important than ever. ... There’s no statute in Pennsylvania that says if you’re married, you’re the parent of the child. That doesn’t exist. Some states have that, we do not.”

States like New Jersey have made these adoptions slightly easier, passing legislation that allows parents who conceived through assisted reproduction to skip the criminal clearances and court appearances.

Beyond the scope of a custody battle, parentage needs to be recognized for issues involving state and federal benefits, as well as inheritance rights.

For new parents like King of Prussia spouses Leigh Ronnan, 39, and Donita Brady, 40, who conceived their 8-month-old through IVF and are trying to bask in the joys of parenthood, the Roe decision served as a wake-up call. They made an appointment with an attorney Friday.

“We have to now spend additional money to formalize Leigh’s relationship with our son, and we already spent all the money to bring him into this world. I think that that’s also part of why we haven’t done it. Like, why do we have to spend any additional funds to do this?” said Brady as Ronnan held back tears.