A gay man who is the father of two children through sperm donation has won a legal battle for access against their 
lesbian mother. The decision means the children will spend more almost half the year with him.
The man, in his 50s, put an ad in the Gay Times magazine expressing an interest in becoming a father.
The ad also said that he “wanted a little involvement” as a father. His ad was answered by a lesbian, and he twice acted as a sperm donor. The lesbian mother and her partner have acted as the primary caregivers, but the man also has “parental responsibility for the children, according to a report in The Daily Mail.
A Brighton County Court directed that the children spend almost half the year with the father, including more than 100 overnight stays earlier this year.
The lesbian couple appealed this ruling to the Court of Appeal, but judges rejected their appeal after hearing that the family situation had changed since the initial plan and it was no longer simply a ‘case of two mummies’.
The father now played a central role in the children’s lives, including taking them to doctors’ appointments and paying their school fees, the Appeal Court was told.
Lady Justice Black ruled that the boy and girl should live with the father for 152 days of the year.
And she urged the parents, who cannot be named, to ‘put aside their differences’ for the sake of their children.
She said: ‘The adults may be very concerned about issues of status such as who could and should be classed as “the parents” but those matters are not likely to be of particular concern to the children.’
The father, who lives in a three-storey townhouse on the coast in West Sussex with his long-term boyfriend, placed the advertisement in 1999.
It read: ‘Gay guy wants to be a Dad. White, handsome, solvent 30s, professional, in happy relationship, non-scene, has everything but kids.
‘Looking for a similar female couple who want to have kids. I require little involvement, I have a lot to offer.’ The lesbian couple who replied were happy for the father to have contact with the children, but have been their main carers since birth and considered themselves their parents, the court was told.
But their relationship with the father deteriorated after the 41-year-old mother claimed he had tried to ‘marginalise’ her 39-year-old civil partner.
The two women accused the father of being domineering and controlling and also claimed that he favoured his son over his daughter when he bought the boy a puppy.
The father took the case to court earlier this year and in June was awarded a shared residence order which meant the children would spend almost half the year with him.
County court judge Simon Barker QC said at the time that he had been struck by the intensity of the women’s dislike for the children’s father.
The Appeal Court was told that the children were ‘aware of difficulties between Mummy and Daddy’.
Yesterday, as she upheld the original court order, Lady Justice Black said: ‘If the adults do not manage to resolve things by communicating with each other, the children inevitably suffer, and the adults may also pay the price when the children are old enough to be aware of what has been going on.
‘It is a tremendous privilege to be involved in bringing up a child.
‘Childhood is over all too quickly and, whilst I appreciate that both sides think that they are motivated only by concern for the children, it is still very sad to see it being allowed to slip away whilst energy is devoted to adult wrangles and to litigation.
‘What is particularly unfair is that the legacy of a childhood tainted in that way is likely to remain with the children into their own adult lives.’