Thursday 31st January 2013- The Guardian: Sperm donors who know parents can apply to see children, court rules

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A court has recently ruled that sperm donors can seek out their biological children should they still have the information to the whereabouts of the couples they donated their sperm to, which was previously not allowed. The ruling that took place on the 31st January means that couples considering sperm donors to conceive have been urged to establish a pre-nuptial agreement in terms of child rearing and co-parenting prior to agreeing to use a donor.

The case was specifically centred around two lesbian couples and a gay couple who are friends in civil partnerships. One of the gay men is a father to two children belonging to one lesbian couple and the other man is a father to a child raised by the other lesbian couple. The male couple has now applied for contact and residency of their biological children under this new ruling. The lesbian couple fought the claim saying this would, saying it would ‘infringe on their family life’ but lost the battle.

Benefits of ruling:

  • Children are able to meet and form relationships with biological fathers
  • If paternal visits were established early on, this would prevent future problems within the existing family and the sperm donor when/if the child wishes to find or contact their birth father in the future
  • Couples can seek to receive child support from sperm donors, benefiting the child’s/children’s way of living

Implications of ruling:

  • Couples who agreed to a sperm donation on the premise of sole custody are being faced by donors going against what they initially agreed, meaning a violation of the rights of the couple as their contract is no longer valid
  • The nature of the agreement will be controversial, and hat is to become of any verbal agreements made prior to the ruling
  • The child may not wish to meet them
  • If the donor has another family, they may wish to bring more than just themselves into the children’s lives, which could be hard on the child/children in question and their families
  • Sperm donation is mainly for money, it can be argued that there are other ways to get money, and so by accepting money they made a transaction in which they agreed that the the sperm and any subsequent children no longer belonged to them
  • As compensation, the family may demand that the donor must accept some responsibility for their child financially, but as the donor does not know how many children they have helped to conceive, they may not be able to afford to provide child support for all their offspring or there may become issue of preference or inequality, sparking further controversy.

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