When Australian, Neil Richards answered a lesbian couple’s advertisement in a magazine to use his sperm to conceive, he said they agreed he should be involved in his daughter’s life but exactly how was never decided.
Richards, the “donor dad”, provided sperm to Jesse Star, paid $5000 for her fertility treatments, paid for the midwife, and agreed to father a child with Ms Star’s partner Sofia Marita, but that failed.
The women separated in 2008 and ten years after the birth of the three parents’ daughter, Marita is in court seeding to have Richards name removed from the girls’ birth certificate.
Richards has seen his daughter for five hours a fortnight since she was aged one, and although not obliged to, he paid $150 support a week for her first year, and one-third of her school fees for two years.
The girl is the major beneficiary in his will and she calls his mother ”Nan”.
Last year he had allowed Ms Star, listed on the birth certificate as a clairvoyant and funeral celebrant, to stay at his Hazelbrook home for three months when she was unable to pay rent at her own home, Richards said.
He is devastated that he may be taken off the birth certificate.
”It’s a very depressing situation … the birth certificate is more than a bit of paper; it tells people who you are,” he said.
”No one seems to care about fathers these days.”
In NSW, a sperm donor does not have legal parenting responsibilities – and thus cannot make decisions about the child’s education or medical needs – even if a court grants visitation rights and he is on the birth certificate.
It is not possible under NSW law to have three parents with legal responsibilities. Had Mr Richards had sexual intercourse with Ms Star or married her, he would have gained that legal status.
Partners of lesbian mothers gained that right automatically with the introduction of the Miscellaneous Acts Amendment (Same Sex Relationships) Act.
It is the first case of its kind since the introduction of a retrospective law in 2008 giving lesbian couples equal parenting responsibilities or legal status.
Of 94,354 birth registrations last year, 117 were for children born to same-sex parents.
Both women declined to comment and the case is continuing in court.
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