Friday Legal Updates™ - India, Sperm Donation, Israel, Ireland & Virginia
Hello, and welcome to Friday Legal Updates regarding surrogacy, sperm donation, adoption, and other topics of interest. TGIF! Short but sweet so enjoy!
1. Florida - Florida Must Recognize Lesbian Adoption from Washington - The answer, an appellate court said earlier today, is that Florida must recognize the adoption. In other words, when parenthood is established by adoption it is portable.
2. Virginia - Court Gives Full Faith and Credit to NC Custody Order for Gay Dads. Three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of Virginia ruled on November 24 that the Fairfax Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court had properly accorded full faith and credit, as required by the U.S. Constitution, to a North Carolina judicial decision awarding primary legal and residential custody of a child to two gay men (who are registered California domestic partners). Still pending before the lower court is a demand by the woman who served as surrogate mother for this child that the North Carolina custody ruling be modified to give her sole custody. One of the judges on the Court of Appeals argued in dissent that the case was not properly before the court for review.
3. Pennsylvania - Court Orders Child Support from Sperm Donor. might be the first of its kind in the U.S. A Superior Court panel last week ordered a Dauphin County judge to establish how much Carl L. Frampton Jr. would have to pay to the birth mother of the 8-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl. “I’m unaware of any other state appellate court that has found that a child has, simultaneously, three adults who are financially obligated to the child’s support and are also entitled to visitation,” said New York Law School professor Arthur S. Leonard, an expert on sexuality and the law.
4. Ireland - Gay sperm donor should see his son. DUBLIN (AP) -- The Irish Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a gay man who donated his sperm to a lesbian couple should be permitted to see his 3-year-old son regularly - in part because Ireland's constitution doesn't recognize the lesbians as a valid family unit.
5. Israel - Israel to Address Gay Surrogacy. The Israeli Health Ministry is considering to allow gay couples to have a child through surrogate mothers, according to ministry legal adviser Mira Huebner-Harel. Heubner-Harel announced Monday at an Israel Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology conference that the health ministry is planning to form a committee to update the law. "The traditional family unit has been changing lately," said Huebner-Harel, reports Haaretz. "A man, woman and child was good, but the trend is changing, and we know of male couples who travel across the sea to have children through surrogates."
6. India - Surrogacy should be governed by laws, not market: Panel. Repulsed by commercialisation of surrogacy using reproductive technologies, the Law Commission has proposed a legislation to restrict it to altruistic arrangements and clearly define the rights of commissioning parents, child and the volunteering mother. It also proposed that surrogacy should be governed by contract among the commissioning parents and the surrogate mother.
Have a great weekend!!
