Two donor-conceived children are waiting for a court to decide who exactly are their legal parents and whether they can be taken across an international border in a relocation from Australia to New Zealand. The case has major implications for international custody disputes of donor-conceived children all over the world because, under the Hague Convention, a child cannot be taken by a parent from a member country to another member country to live without the permission of the other parent.
The children were born to a lesbian woman in Australia. A gay man is the sperm-donating father to one of the children, and is claiming parentage of both children due to his role as a co-parent. He has petitioned the courts in Australia to prevent the children being relocated to New Zealand.
The woman’s same-sex partner asked the courts to declare her the legal parent of both children, which would have involved her name replacing that of the gay man on the birth cert of the older child, his genetic daughter. Irish law will soon permit the names of two women to appear on a birth certificate.
A lower court decided that the lesbian partner was the parent of one child–the younger child conceived through an American sperm donor–but not of the older child, conceived using the sperm of the gay man. The Court’s reasoning was that the partner’s relationship with the mother was not ‘de facto’, or reasonably established, at the time of the conception of that child. The judge ruled the relationship, at that stage, was still only developing, albeit rapidly, and so the man was allowed to remain as a legal parent and was granted the injunction to prevent the children being removed from the country.
The women have appealed that decision and the case is to be heard later this year in Australia.
