Adoption order should be revoked declares senior family law judge
by Marilyn Stowe:
The welfare of a child born to a same sex couple requires the revocation of an adoption order, a senior family law judge has declared.
The couple in question entered a civil partnership, and later converted this into a marriage. In a High Court ruling, Sir James Munby referred to them as ‘X’ and ‘Y’.
He noted:
“They had planned their family carefully. Each wanted to bear a child, using sperm provided by the same donor. Because X is somewhat older than Y, they decided that X should be the first…”
Following fertility treatment at a clinic operated by Barts Health NHS Trust, X gave birth to a child in 2010. Later Y underwent similar treatment and also gave birth.
Some time after the birth of their first child, however, they were “devastated” to discover that Y had not been legally registered as a parent of their first child.
Barts contacted Y to announce the news while she was pregnant with the couple’s second child.
She reported:
“They told me that I was not [the first child]’s legal parent … I rang [X], instantly, I was sobbing. I could not believe what I had been told. Fortunately [she] was very close to home. When I received that telephone call I felt like my whole world had been ripped apart. I was no longer [the first child]’s mummy. This still remains very raw.”
X also remembered the conversation:
“[She] called me, [she] was sobbing and I could barely make out what she was saying.”
The couple were informed by their then solicitors that the best solution to the situation was for Y to adopt X, a suggestion described by Sir James as “utterly inappropriate”.
They proceeded with an adoption application in 2014, and an adoption order was duly granted, but the couple found the process intrusive, an invasion of their privacy and something that simply “felt wrong”.
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