Topekan William Marotta sought only to become a sperm donor — but now the state of Kansas is trying to have him declared a father.
Nearly four years ago, Marotta donated sperm in a plastic cup to a lesbian couple after responding to an ad they had placed on Craigslist.
Marotta and the women, Topekans Angela Bauer and Jennifer Schreiner, signed an agreement holding him harmless for support of the child, a daughter Schreiner bore after being artificially inseminated.
But the Kansas Department for Children and Families is now trying to have Marotta declared the 3-year-old girl’s father and forced to pay child support. The case is scheduled for a Jan. 8 hearing in Shawnee County District Court.
Hannah Schroller, the attorney defending Marotta, said the case has intriguing social and reproductive rights implications.
She said Marotta, a mechanic who has taken care of foster children with his wife, Kimberly, answered a Craigslist ad placed by Bauer and Schreiner seeking a sperm donor in March 2009.
The law in the only state in which I am familiar with the law is that it all depends on marital status. A donor who is married to the mother automatically becomes the father, but a donor who is not married to the mother has to adopt the child if he wants any parental rights and the concomitant obligations.
That strikes me as a much better criteria than the one that Kansas is apparently using (though I think all such contracts should be enforceable). Though I do understand the state’s interest here, this sort of thing is toxic to the extent that we want to encourage alternative paths to pregnancy. I’ve commented in the past that one of the main reason I would never become a donor – including an anonymous one with a clinic – is that some judge somewhere will come to the decision that such arrangements are not in the best interest of the child. This isn’t that, but it would still put me ill-at-ease.
So, Putin signed the law eliminating or heavily restricting adoption in the US.
The U.S. State Department said it “deeply regrets” the law announced by the Kremlin.
“The Russian government’s politically motivated decision will reduce adoption possibilities for children who are now under institutional care,” it said in a statement. “We are further concerned about statements that adoptions already underway may be stopped and hope that the Russian government would allow those children who have already met and bonded with their future parent to finish the necessary legal procedures so that they can join their families.”
The announcement was a wrenching one for Aaron and Jenny Moyer, coming in an adoption process that was well under way for them to become parents of a Russian orphan named Vitali. They carry photographs of them and Vitali together during their visits to Russia.
My understanding of Russian adoption is that it is often “buyer beware.” That there are a lot of problems with the kids having their special needs (or possible special needs) concealed. I sort of keep track of adoption law because we may be in the market for #2 and #3t. In this case, it doesn’t matter as much because my wife and I are not seen as desirable parents by the Russian adoption system anyway.
I hate to kick this hornet’s nest, but this being KS…
Does any part of this decision have to do with the fact that a same sex couple is involved? I’m guessing this isn’t the first parent who’s adopted a child filing for some kind of assistance.
Sort of. If the mother was married to a man instead of with a woman, I don’t think it would occur to them to look for another father for support. On the other hand, if she were a single mother, it would as likely as not play out the same way. It’s pretty standard to go after the father (demand that he be named, if she knows) when a woman applies for benefits.
So yeah, the lesbianism is pertinent. The fact that it’s a conservative state rather than a liberal state that doesn’t (yet) allow gay marriage is less pertinent, though. I suspect pre-SSM California would have done the same.
” I sort of keep track of adoption law because we may be in the market for #2 and #3t.”
Part of me thinks it is unfortunate that you referred to adoption as being “in the market.” I don’t think you meant it in a malicious way but the idea of it being a market highlights a lot of the problems of the field. There are probably many people who see it as a market and/or geo-political tool to get things. Russia’s policy change is largely about nationalism.
Good point. Poor word choice on my part.
As I understand the facts of the case, the use of the phrase “forced to pay child support” is at least misleading. The details appear to be: (1) after her partner became unemployed, the single mother filed for public assistance for the child (mostly medical care); (2) KS, like many other states, has a “dead-beat dad” law that obligates the state to attempt to recover the cost of such assistance from the biological father (such laws have saved those states at least hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars over the years); and (3) KS law includes a procedure for artificial insemination that, if followed, would have provided immunity from the dead-beat dad law (for whatever reasons, ignorance or otherwise, the people involved didn’t follow that procedure).
There have been similar cases in other states. My reading of summaries of those cases is that in general, for do-it-yourself artificial insemination (no third-party doctor involved) from a known sperm donor, it doesn’t matter whether the sperm got there by pipette or penis, or what kinds of private contracts have been signed, the father is liable for the public assistance if they can pay.
If KS had same-sex marriage, it seems likely that the only impact would have been that the child might not have been eligible for public assistance.
You are correct that there is a procedure that could have been followed to avoid this, but the “carried out by a physician” requirement comes across to me as rather arbitrary. The pipette/penis distinction makes more sense.
You might be right about Kansas. I’d been thinking that the child had been adopted by the second mother. But Kansas probably wouldn’t allow that anyway. So it’s a question of what the second mother’s income looked like.
Other stuff I have read suggests that the folks who wrote the original model laws felt that many possible legal problems (including various forms of fraud) could be eliminated if there was a credible third-party witness to testify, “I received a viable sperm donation from John Jones and implanted it in Sally Smith.” A licensed physician seems like the obvious choice: it’s a more-or-less medical procedure, and the doctor’s livelihood is at risk if they commit perjury.
Seems like a bunch of well-intentioned people getting caught in a web of equally well-intentioned laws. Not sure what the ideal outcome is, truth be told.
Is the Russian baby-adopting ban specific to the USA? Or is it any foreign adoption? If it’s the second, I can see that being just barely defensible — Russia’s population is declining at a rate which concerns her demographers, so perhaps there is a need to keep the Russian babies in Russia so as to keep the nation’s population over a particular (perhaps not well-defined) threshold.
If it’s just about the USA, well, gee, I thought we’d got past all of that sort of thing by 1991. And don’t tell me there aren’t clever lawyers willing to set up a transaction to circumvent the law anyway for a couple interested in having a Russian baby.
They can avoid the usual nationality check using the baby show loophole.
Whew! I was worried because without Russian babies, how am I gonna make Russian dressing?!?
And if it spreads to the OPEC countries, how will we make baby oil?
They can have my White Russians when they take them out of my…cold hands, man.
…what were we talking about?
Something about two thugs buying some shrooms together.
“That there are a lot of problems with the kids having their special needs (or possible special needs) concealed.”
I taught two students who were adopted from Russia, both who presented with special needs (they were adopted brothers, but whether they were biological brothers was unclear). It was really difficult for the parents to come to terms with their needs, in part because they had been given a supposed “clean bill of health” by the orphanage. The parents were very supportive overall, but understandably they were trying to make sense of one group of people saying the boys were typically developing and another group saying otherwise. I left the school before anything was resolved regarding their needs and the support they’d get. It was a tough situation. And it left open for me the conversation of any form of recourse parents might have if an adoption agency (domestic or international, though more likely the former) deliberately concealed the needs of a child. It reminds me of Rose’s many great pieces on “wrongful birth” lawsuits.
My qualm with it would be my speculation (right or wrong, I don’t know) that the sperm would be used to make several embryos that would be frozen in a state of quasi-existence while only one or two would be inseminated.