Posted on 12/30/2012 5:39:04 AM PST by billorites
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.
In an email to Marotta that is part of court records, Bauer described herself and Schreiner as a “financially stable lesbian couple,” with Bauer working outside the home and Schreiner being a stay-at-home mom with their other children.
“We are foster and adoptive parents and now we desire to share a pregnancy and birth together,” Bauer wrote.
Marotta responded in an email that he was 43 years old, 6 feet 1 inches tall and weighed 205 pounds, reasonably fit and in good health, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Marotta, Bauer and Schreiner each signed an agreement saying he would be paid $50 per semen donation, with the arrangement including a clear understanding that he would have no parental rights whatsoever with the child or children.
The agreement also called for Bauer and Schreiner to hold Marotta harmless “for any child support payments demanded of him by any other person or entity, public or private, including any district attorney’s office or other state or county agency, regardless of the circumstances or said demand.”
Schroller said that after consulting with his wife, Marotta decided to donate free of charge rather than taking the $50.
She said Marotta subsequently received periodic email updates on the child after her birth but hasn’t had much contact with Schreiner and Bauer. The Topeka Capital-Journal was unable to reach the women Friday.
On Oct. 3, attorney Mark McMillan filed a petition on behalf of the Department of Children and Families seeking a ruling that Marotta is the father of Schreiner’s child and owes a duty to support her. It said the department provided cash assistance totaling $189 for the girl for July through September 2012 and had paid medical expenses totaling $5,884.96.
Schroller, an attorney with Topeka-based Swinnen & Associates, said the state became involved after the mother fell on hard times and applied for financial assistance through the state.
She said of Schreiner: “My understanding is that after being pressed on paternity of the child, she gave them William’s name as a sperm donor. The state then filed this suit to determine paternity.”
Angela de Rocha, spokeswoman for the Department for Children and Families, said Friday that Kansas law prevented her from commenting on the case.
On Oct. 24, Schroller filed a motion to dismiss the case.
McMillan responded in a motion filed Nov. 1 that the hold harmless agreement between Marotta, Bauer and Schreiner was moot because it didn’t meet the primary requirement of Kansas statute 23-2208(f) that Schreiner have a licensed physician perform the artificial insemination.
Marotta signed an affidavit in September saying he had no reason to believe a medical professional wouldn’t carry out the artificial insemination using the semen specimen he provided.
Schroller replied in a court document filed Dec. 20 that her case was consistent with “In Re K.M.H.,” a 2007 case in which the Kansas Supreme Court denied parental rights to a man who sought them after providing a sperm donation under similar circumstances. A licensed physician performed the insemination in the 2007 case, in which the donor was Topekan Daryl Hendrix, but no physicians apparently were involved in Marotta’s case.
Still, Schroller wrote that Marotta took the same actions as the man in the 2007 case did, and he — like that man — should be considered a sperm donor, not a father.
She stressed that sperm banks regularly ship sperm donations for the intended purpose of artificial insemination within the United States and abroad to both residential and medical facility addresses.
Schroller wrote: “If, as the petitioner alleges, the use of a licensed physician is a primary requirement of K.S.A. 23-2208(f), then any woman in Kansas could have sperm donations shipped to her house, inseminate herself without a licensed physician and seek out the donor for financial support because her actions made him a father, not a sperm donor. This goes against the very purpose of the statute to protect sperm donors as well as birth mothers.”
Perhaps, but you're letting the nanny-welfare-state completely off the hook as if it were some natural force we have no control over. The decision is outrageous.
Two adults entered into a contract [no matter how distasteful you may find it] and the state has now broken that contract because of a technicality.
instead of trying to outlaw guns, maybe we should be outlawing turkey basters
I believe in Indiana some years back that a court there ordered a sperm donor to by child support
Beautiful example of the complications in this area of law. The lesbian couple should have adopted the baby, terminating the parental relationship between the donor and the infant.
“Schroller, an attorney with Topeka-based Swinnen & Associates, said the state became involved after the mother fell on hard times and applied for financial assistance through the state.”
Kansas domestic lawyer here. I’ve been involved in three cases regarding lesbian couples. What is not said but is obvious is that the “mother” who was going out in the workforce and making the money, dumped her girlfriend. She had no financial obligation towards the child or the child’s mother. Other children are mentioned, fostered and adopted. It is legal in Kansas for a single person to adopt so there are probably one or two special needs kids. Those are easy for the state to support but then there’s the little 3 year old. Mom is told that she can get more money if she will simply give up the name of the biological father. She does and the state pursues him. Interesting case. I hope that the sperm donor goes after the other party in this case whom I hope signed that contract. She probably does have some money and that indemnification clause should require her to pay the sperm donor.
The loser in all this is the little girl who no doubt bonded to both the adults in her life and now is in a home with a single mother, a couple of troubled adopted kids, and no father. She’s lost the other “mom” and is no doubt confused by the whole thing. Lots of damage here and yes, the sperm donor in trying to do a good thing, created chaos. Good intentions and all.
One other thing. It’s clearly the law in Kansas and I assume in most places that the parents cannot contract to deny their child financial support. The support is the right of the child and he/she cannot contract it away. The narrow exception is the statute regarding sperm donors. Because it’s an exception, it will be narrowly interpreted. I predict that unless the sperm donor can get the other “mother” to pay him back, he’s looking at supporting the child and paying the medical expenses until she’s 18.
Make sperm donor “dads” pay.
It’s a cruel joke to breed pet children with no fathers.
I disagree. It traditionally had been the case that only children conceived in wedlock were due support. It was a big incentive for women insist on marriage. Then in the early 1970's, the Supreme Court invalidated those state illegitimacy laws.
This is one factor that helped the downward slide that started in the 1960's and 70's.
And if a husband and wife were unable to conceive and a sperm donor was used, then do you feel the biological father is responsible?
Only men with no assets or garnishable income would risk impregnating a women who is, or might go on, welfare. At least the ones with any sense.
Dumbassed idiots all around. After he j’o in a cup, he had no control what happened to it.
I too, like Cl. I’ve made some good sells and buys there.
Who can tell? After a 12 pack all women look alike........
I completely agree. I also agree with the posters who say this guy is an idiot. He “donated” his sperm on an impulse as a result of liberal feel good ideology. Oh the poor lesbians deserve to have children and I can help. At the very least he should have hired a lawyer who would have told him his potential financial liability.
Just wondering if him and his wife have any children of their own. Perhaps the wife is a liberal feminist who refuses to have children with him and he had a desire to have a child even if he couldn’t care for him/her.
Regardless he deserves whatever consequences come of this mess.
And everybody should have had lawyers. Oh and you can’t practice law for yourself competently even though you are “allowed” to just to save money.
Yes.
believe you me, if the state spends one thin dime on a kid, they are looking for the fathers. Usually when the mom won’t cough up the name it is because it is a case of incest. And yeah, once the dad is id’d, he is paying back the state, that is, if he has any kind of a job.
Now that the state has put out money for the care of the child, it is going to get it back from somebody. If this guy was too stupid to have this all settled and legally binding upfront - 6 ways from Sunday - he’s an idiot. Yeah, it’s nanny-state crap, I agree, but he should have known that from the beginning. He’s fool enough to take the word of these women he met on Craig’s List and risk the financial well-being of his wife and family on that? That’s “felony stupid”.
6. Should the “Father” sue the State and Lessies for his rights to parenting this child(even though he’s not much)?
If the State considers him a “Father” then he has rights also!
If the” 2-Mothers” are indigent then the “Father” might be able to afford a better home?
Get the child into a better environment!
3. In our state, if you get benefits (EBT, health ins., etc) we’re gonna find the baby daddy, genetic test him and make him pay.
There have been many cases where an ex husband has been stuck with child support for someone else’s kid (wife cheated). Even proof through DNA testing didn’t get them off the hook.
Before I returned to Christianity (well, I strayed pretty badly but it didn’t ever really leave me), I was friendly with a lesbian couple. They wanted to have children and asked me as a friend to be their donor.
Where I was mentally and morally at the time, that was sort of flattering, stange as it sounds to me today. I hadn’t fathered any children and the thought was sort of nice. I’d be involved as much or as little as I wanted to be, they said, but they wanted a contract regarding custody and parental rights, the child would be legally theirs.
There were niggling pangs of conscience that continued to grow, but what really put the while notion on the wrong foot was the contract. It brought to mind the legal difficulties so many friends of mine had had over the years, due to divorce, custody and child support. So, I got a copy of their proposed contract and made an appointment with an attorney.
The first words out of his mouth were, don’t do it. All moral considerations aside, you’re going to be on the hook just as surely as any other paternity case, ultimately. The contract wasn’t worth the paper it was written upon in a court of law dealing with the welfare of the child, such couples are rarely of any duration and the custodial lesbian “partner” WILL be coming after you. The court will favor the child’s benefit, no question, no consideration of any other agreements.
So, I didn’t do it. In hindsight, I’d have been wracked by guilt, being responsible for bringing a child into such an environment. I do still wonder about what might have been, though. It’s a very strange situation.
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