A two-year-old boy in the UK is at the centre of a dispute between his mother, her female partner and the child’s sperm donor father over access and custody

The case bears a striking resemblence to an Irish case, McD v L, in which a lesbian couple unsuccessfully attempted to deny a gay sperm donor father increased access rights to his child.

In the UK case, the mother of the child claims to have made a pact with the father during a restaurant meeting before the boy was conceived that she and her lover would fill the role of “primary parents” within a “nuclear family” and that he would not stand on his paternal rights.

But now she and her partner say they feel “bitter and betrayed” after the father – a former close friend who attended the birth and held the new-born baby in his arms – demanded overnight and holiday contact with his biological son.

The Daily Telegraph reports that all three parents are highly-paid professionals living in central London and the father, in his 40s, insists he was always far more than a mere sperm donor and he wants to play a full paternal role in the life of the only child he is every likely to have.

The father was formerly in a “marriage of convenience” with the mother, although they are now divorced, and three Appeal Court judges are being asked to rule on whether the little boy would be best off with “three parents and two homes”.

The court heard the father currently has five hours visiting contact with the boy each fortnight, but wants this gradually increased to the point where he can have his son to stay overnight and take him on holiday.
 
Alex Verdan QC, for the father, asked the court to focus on the boy’s best interests, and said the current level of contact between them had “frozen” their relationship, which will “wither on the vine”.

“The father described vividly to the court the pleasure and joy that he feels in interacting with his son when they see each other and the boy’s responses to him. The father wants to play a full part in his development. He has a strong desire to develop a father-son relationship with the boy, with time spent alone with him.”

But Charles Howard QC, for the mother and her partner, said they had “planned parenthood” together and, had they known prior to conception the position the father would later take, they would have opted for an anonymous sperm donor.

At the pre-conception restaurant meeting it had been “clearly agreed” that the boy would be brought up in a “two-parent” family, and the mother and her partner had been left with a sense of “bitterness and betrayal” by the father’s demands, he said.

And he told the judges: “It is right that that agreement was reached; the court has to show more than lipservice to it and must give it considerable weight, otherwise there’s no point having such an agreement.”

Mr Howard said the father had been the mother’s “best friend” prior to the boy’s birth and, even now, she and her partner are happy for him to visit their son at Christmas and other times.

The QC denied the mother and her partner were bent on excluding the father from having “any kind of relationship” with his son.

He added: “Notwithstanding their sexuality and that they acknowledge to that extent that they are an ‘alternative family’, the mother and her partner hold very traditional views of family life and would not have chosen to bring a child into anything other than an intact, two-parent, family.

“The ideal upbringing for a child is a stable home in which the parents love each other and had together chosen to bring a child into the world. This is the upbringing which the mother and her partner always wanted to create for this little boy.

“They were always of the view that their son’s best interests militated against him spending very much time away from them or from his home.”

Mr Howard added: “To this particular couple, the concept of ‘three parents, two homes’, repeated so often by the father, is very alien and it has never been something they would consider.

“It has never been my clients’ case that this boy does not need a male parent. Nor was it their case that his contact with his father should be limited to ‘identity contact’.”

The mother and her partner had never viewed the father as a “mere sperm donor” and the QC added: “They decided to proceed with a known donor, and one who was their friend, in order to provide their child with a father with whom he could form a limited but important relationship.

“There is considerable anxiety at the prospect of further destabilising their core family if contact (with the father) is extended beyond its current level.”

The judges have now reserved their decision until an unspecified later date.

In the Irish case, the sperm donor father agreed in 2005 to donate sperm to a lesbian couple and signed an agreement with them that he would have the role of ‘favourite uncle’ and access would be at the discretion of the couple.

The child was born in 2006. The man subsequently went to the High Court seeking guardianship and access to him. The High Court found in favour of the two women.

However, the Supreme Court found that, while the man was not entitled to guardianship of the three-year-old boy at this time, it would be in the child’s best interest for his father to have access to him.