SPLIT GAY COUPLES FACE CUSTODY HURDLES: From the New York Times

The case might be called Uterus v. Ovum.

E and K were a lesbian couple in Marin County, Calif., who wanted children. K provided the eggs, E the womb, and a fertility clinic supplied the sperm and the technical help.

When twin girls were born, the women exchanged rings and raised the children together, sharing everything from feeding and diapering to signing school forms. But five years later, they split up. E moved to Massachusetts with the girls, and K went to court to obtain shared custody.

"The world had known us as Mom and Mom," said K, an executive with a nonprofit educational organization, who like E asked to be identified by an initial. "I'm asking that my daughters have access to both moms."

E, a medical administrator who declined to be interviewed, said in a statement, "I made it clear to her from the beginning that I wanted to be a single parent, and that I would accept her ovum donation only if it was truly a donation and I would be the sole legal parent."

The judge agreed, reluctantly, that although K was the genetic mother, E, the birth mother, was entitled to sole custody.

As tens of thousands of same-sex couples become parents, they are increasingly confronting what heterosexual parents have long dealt with: remaking their lives and those of their children after a breakup.

But for gays and lesbians, the legal landscape surrounding such breakups is often uncertain or uncharted. Laws, ill fitting and varying by state, were not written to anticipate same-sex situations, and judges often take interpretative license as they struggle to navigate a rocky path. ...

Many cases of breakups by same-sex couples involve adoption laws, since often, at least one parent has adopted the child. But the status of the second parent is less clear. Only nine states have explicitly allowed so-called second-parent adoptions for gay couples in decisions of their highest courts, four states prohibit them, and many others have not definitively addressed the issue. ...

In Massachusetts, a court is considering another issue: Can a former same-sex partner who does not want responsibility for a child be compelled to pay child support? The case involves a woman, B. L., who participated in having her partner artificially inseminated, but broke up with her partner, T. F., before the child was born.

more
posted by Eve at 4:45 PM | link

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home