Court favours shared parenting

A Family Court ruling has prevented a 41-year-old mother from moving her child from Queensland to NSW, and away from her 39-year-old female ex-partner — the child’s non-biological mother.

The Herald Sun reported Family Court Justice Paul Cronin ruled both parents had the same rights as biological parents and shared equal responsibility for their four-year-old daughter.

“Much of the judicial history about ‘relocation’ cases has focused on heterosexual parents where biological connection was clear,” Justice Cronin said in his judgement, the newspaper reported.

“This case highlights the reality, rather than the abstract, of a breakdown of a same-sex relationship into which had been born children by artificial conception procedures to two different mothers.”

It’s understood the 41-year-old mother requested the Family Court grant her sole parental responsibility for the child, who was conceived via an anonymous sperm donor, claiming the ex-partner was not listed as a parent on the child’s birth certificate.

Justice Cronin ruled the biological mother would not be able to relocate to NSW until next year when the child is five and a half years old and mature enough to cope with a long-distance relationship with her non-biological mother and sister.