Legal News

Custody Battle Pits Gay Couple Against Surrogate

By Nathan Koppel

Yesterday, we talked about an interesting custody dispute involving a lesbian couple.

Today, we head to New Jersey to look at a custody battle between a gay couple and a woman who agreed to act as a surrogate mother for the couple.

In 2006, Angelia Robinson reached an agreement with her brother, Donald, that she would carry to term twins who had been created from anonymous donor eggs and sperm from Sean Hollingsworth, Donald's spouse.

In 2007 Robinson filed suit seeking custody of the twin girls. She claimed she had been coerced into the surrogacy arrangement.

In a decision released this week, New Jersey state judge Francis Schultz ruled that Robinson is the legal mother even though she is not genetically related to the twins. The ruling gives her the right to seek primary custody of the twins at a trial next year.

Here's a New York Times article on the case. The ruling, the Times reports, highlights the legal complexities surrounding gestational surrogacy.

In Michigan, a surrogate recently obtained custody of twins she carried, but other courts have sided with couples who had contracted with surrogates.

The New Jersey ruling relied on early holding by the New Jersey Supreme Court granting maternal rights to a woman who had carried her own genetic child for a couple after she was artificially inseminated with the man's sperm.

Robinson's attorney hailed the ruling this week, telling NYT that surrogacy involves an "exploitation of women."

The couple's attorney said the decision was of particular importance to gay and lesbian couples, because they rely on reproductive technology to have children.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 31, 2009 (boomark / email).