A sperm donor has won parental rights over a lesbian birth mother’s only child in a landmark case.
The ruling was handed down in June by the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia which denied the mother’s parental responsibility for the nine-year-old.
The court instead ruled in favour of her former partner and their sperm donor.
The custody battle has lasted for almost five years between the three adults, costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs, The Herald Sun reported.
The boy was conceived via IVF and the female couple chose donor eggs and donor sperm.
But all parties were known to each other – the eggs were donated by a mutual friend of the birth mother and her then-partner, while the sperm donation was by a man the boy refers to as ‘Daddy’.
The sperm donor met the boy when he was born and has continued to spend time with him regularly, which has included overnight stays.
The man has always maintained he only ever agreed to donate his sperm if there was a condition that he would always be involved in his son’s life.
