Court rules sperm donor is not liable for children

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001922232_spermdonor07.html

Friday, May 07, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.

Court rules sperm donor is not liable for children

By Jonathan Martin
Seattle Times staff reporter

An appeals court ruled yesterday that sperm donors don't have the rights and responsibilities of fatherhood without a specific contract saying so, clarifying a law critical to many adoptive parents, gay couples and fertility clinics.
The ruling, which comes in a tangled Pierce County case, raises an unusual scenario: A man who fathers a child through a sexual relationship can be made to pay support. But if the same child is born in a test tube, the father can walk away.

According to the appeals court, Michael Kepl agreed to give his long-term girlfriend, Teresa Brock, a sperm donation through a University of Washington fertility clinic. Kepl was married and shielded the affair and his donation from his wife.

When a boy was born to Brock in 1998 through in vitro fertilization, Kepl took out a life insurance policy benefiting the baby, stayed in regular contact, paid up to $650 a month in unofficial child support and signed a sworn statement of paternity.

(more)

You never know if the laws or court rulings could change in 10 or twenty years. You may donate sperm today as a college student trying to earn a few extra hundred dollars and find yourself paying thousands in child support 10 years later.

anyone trying to work up a family tree for genealogy in fifty years or so with all the divorces, sperm donors, invitro fertilization going on today. It will be a nightmare trying to figure out who was related to whom. :crazy:

As an adopted child, I resent the comment above about how family trees will be difficult. My father was my father. The biology matters less than the person who was there. I may not like the person he became, but he was there. (My biological father died before my birth.)

And how will it be more difficult than, say, Henry VII's, Ivan Terrible's, the Medici lineage or any other family from the past where married partners changed on a regular basis thanks to death? My great-great grandmother married 4 times, her first husband had been married twice before her, and she raised his sons from his previous marriages as her own. And no, she was never divorced - widowed four times. Further, studies in the 40s on blood tests showed that about 15% of babies didn't have the father that was listed on the birth certificate. Those numbers have remained steady, in fact. That doesn't cause issues in doing 40s genealogy. I don't know any genealogist who automatically discounts the paternity of 15% of the family line.... that would be silly.

Things don't change - the nuclear family never really existed, and neither did life-long marriage. (PM me or email me for references if you want them) Family is about social decisions, not genealogy.

Pcat

It seems to have only been "technically" a donation issue. Not the random, donate eggs/sperm to the clinic that is the classically known method. Still, it's good to know that those sales made to finance books or lab fees won't come back to haunt.