“Non-Bio” Gay Dad Prevails in Texas Parentage Battle

Huffington Post – Frederick Hertz – March 8, 2011

A recent decision by the Texas Court of Appeals in Houston illustrates the complexity — and the nastiness — of one particularly ugly gay divorce. The partners lived in Houston but they traveled to Canada in 2003 to get married and then they registered as domestic partners in California in 2005. Because of the restrictions on gay partnerships and parentage in Texas, they arranged for a surrogate in California to bear their child (with sperm donated from one of them). Prior to the child’s birth they obtained a pre-birth declaration of parentage under the Uniform Parentage Act, which is lawful in California. A pre-birth parentage judgment is one of those newly-created legal devices to establish parentage for gay male couples using a surrogate,with both men designated as legal parents even though only one of them has a biological connection to the child. The non-standard nature of this proceeding has become the subject of legal conflict, now that the couple has broken up.