Ok, so I have a lot of thoughts on this because it is the biggest issue we have in our house so we talk about it a lot. Some of the thoughts i have are outlined below, and are based on what we found changed with adoption.
I would be wary about allowing him to take a back seat because what happens if something happens to you? Would he know the passwords to egress, was he assiduously cced into any emails, would he be able to have the insight into what was going on? We use the phrase "no single point of failure", from disaster planning. It basically means that we refuse to run our lives in a way where the other party is unable to pick up what the other does. For example, my other half is the main breadwinner at the moment, but if she is sick I have maintained the capacity to work and bring in a similar wage if we had to. We both know how the boiler works and the social worker emails and which dentist the boys are at, even if I mainly do the practical boiler fixing and she takes them to the dentist. It's not just about bad principle of fairness or equality, it is about continuity for your child. God forbid the worst happens, but you have to spread the risk, and the knowledge of the adoption journey is too important to be left to chance. So all parties should have the capacity to take part and take the lead in a realistically competent way (not just a I could if i HAD to kind of way because you dont want to be learning where the boiler refill valve is if your partner is incapacitated and you have a traumatised child who is becoming more frustrated that their bath isnt working) even if they don't usually do that. The same goes for admin. If you break your leg and can't be contacted, or need to go for a funeral, you don't need him calling you asking what the social worker managers name is because you need to report something. I would cover your bases! Panel were impressed because they said it showed clearly we had thought about every eventuality. The reality of it was that we had argued so much about it that we have very clear rules and renegotiate household division of labour every few months to account for changing patterns of work and level of input. Plus boredom- emptying the dishwasher or planning meals every day gets boring and hard. So is answering the million emails from a social worker or entering dates into your diary for chasing up on the dates they said whilst you are watching tv at night, and resentment grows when you are double screening and your partner is dozing through the latest episode of whatever you are bingewatching. At first everything seems like a novelty, but ultimately it becomes a chore.l, so treat it as such.
That being said, having one person on point at a time is often helpful, and we found my partner was more able to take phonecalls at the last minute, which was useful. It's worth considering who is available in working hours, who has better written language, who can respond to emails promptly etc. However, we agreed in advance that this would have a daily cap- so only one or two emails would go by without her making a specific effort to check in with me about what had been said and for us to agree next steps. Sometimes for example I would get an email, forward it to her to write a response we had discussed, then she would send it to me to send back to rhe social worker. It also meant we didn't miss things. (Yes, our social workers hated us)
We also balanced this with a desire to sometimes play good cop bad cop. Sometime social workers need a reminder, and I would send a nice email, then she would follow with a more formal email to ensure the message was driven home that action needed to be taken. We also proof read emails we are sending to make sure we hit the right tone and have joint enterprise for any shit we know we are going to Stir up. Checks and balances are the name of the game when it comes to getting the right level of forcefulness with actually maintaining a relationship with people!
It might also be worth considering what patterns are being set up for the long run. As the stay at home parent, my brain was absolutely frazzled by being home with two small kids. I could barely answer the phone without the screaming starting because they couldn't have my attention away from them, I was knackered because they needed me throughout the night and i had a memory like a fish because i was too busy trying to remember how to make the oven cook but not brown alphabet bites every bloody night. I NEEDED her to take the phone calls from the social workers and put stuff in our family diary because I was a hot mess of a human being, but they were used to it because we shared the load equally and I told them I needed them to speak to her and we would make any important decisions together. It's worth remembering or considering that you will get little to no admin done during the day with kids if they are anything like mine. I once tried all day to reply to a text from my lovelynwife only to sit down at 7 and realise I had never actually finished it.
Admin is also a task to solidly add into your division of labour when the kids arrive. Adoption admin tends to run into childcare admin, and I'm telling you now, it can be an absolute ballache. Some people don't find it so, but because we wanted all the gory details, to tie up as many knots as we could, we went though everything together.
If your husband finds it hard, maybe you could chat about ways to help him manage this? For example, we tabled topics we knew would need discussion for long car journeys. In fact, we once deliberately picked up bikes from the coast so that we had a reason to take 4 hours in the car to discuss the kids cprs and decide on an approach. She also reads out important emails out loud to me in the evening. We each use our family calendar religiously to set follow up reminders so that we are both responsible for that. We divide any research on topics (for example what baby monitor to use vs what nursery we wanted) and do them both for a set time period so that it feels fair.
Also, if you do all the admin, you arrange stuff to suit you, not him. So meetings and phone calls naturally get arranged on your time not his, and it snowballs easily. Extrapolate that to thatband the kids stuff as well and suddenly he is palying golf on a Saturday and you can't see friends because you are taking the kids to their football tournament.
Ultimately you have to be willing to have a very real conversation about what this will look like. Don't get sucked into the "because I'm at home I will just...." because that does a disservice to the work you are putting into caring for a child and also potentially setting poor role modelling up for any children. Although we are a same sex partnership, it would be easy for us to fall into relatively stereotypical gender norms or dynamics, and we are keen that our boys don't learn that whoever is at home somehow is responsible for knowing when everyone's dentist appointment is!
Also to consider is what does adoption admin involve? Because for us it is contact with social workers, texting the foster carers, filling in DLA forms, exercise logs, forms for swimming lessons, phoencalls with the gp, being on hold with the car insurance people whilst you try to explain adoption process them, posting court paperwork, adoption allowance forms, all of which require cross referencing dates with previous forms and emails, submitting expense forms, filing for birth certificates, meeting head teachers, researching schools, special schools, trauma informed pratice... the list is endless.
Also, don't underestimate how things you think you have sorted out in your relationship become real bones of contention when you are on your knees with tiredness and your child just won't stop screaming because they don't want cheese on their cheese and tomato pizza and your partner doesn't put his mug in the dishwasher again. We have cried over less!
Anyway, we have thought a lot about this, hopefully some of the thoughts above will prompt some conversations, even if you just think we are both just a bit OTT and don't need to do any of this stuff at all!