Australian lesbian attempts to remove sperm donor from child’s birth certificate
An Australian lesbian whose former partner had a child with a sperm donor is fighting a legal battle to have his name removed from the child’s birth certificate.
The woman, whose ex-partner is the biological mother of the ten-year-old girl, wants the man’s name wiped from the girl’s records, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
All parties cannot be named due to legal reasons.
The man, who has seen the girl once a fortnight for nine years, claims he has spent $50,000 in legal fees fighting the case.
This is the first case of its kind since retrospective laws came into power in 2008 to give lesbian couples equal parenting rights.
The child was born after the man answered an advert placed by the woman and her former partner for a sperm donor.
He claims that although he paid for the woman’s partner’s medical treatment, the girl’s school fees and other support, the trio never established how much contact he should have with his daughter.
He told the Sydney Morning Herald: “Everything was fine until the baby was born … they used me and they took my money and now they’ve got what they want, they really just didn’t want to know me.”
The women have not commented.
Last year in the UK, a man won joint custody of the seven and ten-year-old children he had with a lesbian couple.
The couple found the man through an ad in a gay magazine, in which he said that he wished for “a little involvement” as a father.
The Court of Appeal upheld an order giving him custody of the children for 152 days a year.
