A gay father who acted as a sperm donor for a lesbian mother and her partner has won the right to a full relationship with his son after senior judges said he was not a “secondary” parent.
In a dispute that has implications for the legal status of alternative families, the Court of Appeal ruled that three parents were no worse than two and the father’s role in his son’s life should be recognised.
The father had challenged his limited contact with the two-year-old boy, ordered after the mother claimed that he had “broken his pact” not to claim paternal rights over the child.
Lord Justice Thorpe, sitting with Lady Justice Black and Sir John Chadwick, ruled that the decision to have a child could never be a matter of “dry legal contact”. He added that “human emotions are powerful and inconstant” and, despite the women’s desire to create “a two-parent lesbian nuclear family”, the father was “seeking to offer a relationship of considerable value” to his son.
“It is generally accepted that a child gains by having two parents. It does not follow from that that the addition of a third is necessarily disadvantageous,” Lord Justice Thorpe said.
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The boy’s biological mother said she had made a pact with the father at a restaurant before conception that she and her lesbian lover would fill the role of “primary parents” and that he would not stand on his paternal rights.
She and her partner said they felt “bitter and betrayed” after the father — the mother’s former husband in a “marriage of convenience” to mollify his family — demanded overnight and holiday contact with his son.
The father, a religious man in his 40s, attended the birth, and objected when a judge had described his relationship with his son as “limited”, ruling on limited contact. Confined to seeing the boy for a few hours once a fortnight, he took his case to the Court of Appeal.
Lady Justice Black said the preconception understanding between the three adults — all highly paid professionals living in Central London — as to the roles each would play in the boy’s upbringing could not necessarily hold sway in the life of a child. The father’s case will now go to the High Court Family Division for a judge to reassess the level of contact with his son.
Law, page 59-61