A woman has lost a Court of Appeal challenge over her name being removed from her child’s birth certificate after it was revealed her ex-wife had sex with a sperm donor behind her back.
The case concerned who the parents were of a now six-year-old born amid an “informal conception arrangement” between two women and a man, judges were told.
The ex-couple, referred to as P and Q, met then-stranger F in a pub following an internet advert and “formed a favourable impression of him” before signing a sperm donor agreement over the use of artificial insemination.
An “upset and depressed” P contacted the man for support after two failed attempts to make her pregnant, the court was told.
P and F then had sex three times at P’s parents’ house, without Q’s knowledge, with the third occasion coinciding with another artificial insemination attempt.
The child was conceived but judges said “it is impossible to know which method of insemination led to her conception”.
P and Q later divorced amid disagreements over the care of the child.
P then revealed what had happened and secured a court declaration earlier this year that F was the child’s legal parent.
The case was a “cautionary tale” about the consequences of “deceit” and informal artificial insemination arrangements, Mrs Justice Gwynneth Knowles said.
She concluded on the balance of probabilities that while Q had not consented to sex between P and F, the method of the child’s conception was “unclear”.
It meant Q could not have parenthood under a law that grants it to the wives or civil partners of women who give birth via artificial insemination.
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Q appealed the decision at a hearing in London this month, but in a written judgment on Friday, Lord Justice Peter Jackson said the challenge should be dismissed.
Lawyers for Q argued it was for P to show the child was not conceived as a result of artificial insemination.
P’s legal team said scientific testing showed F was the child’s genetic father, meaning the court had to declare paternity in his favour because it could not be proved that the law over artificial insemination applied.
Lord Justice Peter Jackson said Q had not proved the legislation applied.
He said the child existed “because P and Q wanted” a baby and F “was at that time no more than a means to an end”, adding: “It may therefore seem strange that [the child’s] parentage should be determined by the way in which [the child] was conceived, but in this area a line must be drawn somewhere.”
Following a separate welfare hearing, a judge gave all three adults parental responsibility for the child, Lord Justice Peter Jackson said.