Co-parents must seek legal advice

A GLBT family law expert has warned gay and lesbian couples to seek legal advice and counselling before entering into a co-parenting arrangement.

Paul Boers, who also does volunteer work at the Inner City Legal Centre, made the comments after the Family Court of Australia ruled on a conflict between a lesbian couple and a gay male couple after the co-parenting arrangement between them broke down.

One of the men, a long-time friend of the birth mother, provided sperm for the women to conceive a child with the understanding they were to play a role in the child’s life.

Before conception the couples met in Sydney to work out an agreement about the men’s involvement.

At the meeting they agreed the men would initially play a limited role in the child’s life. Their role would grow until the child would spend equal time with both couples. The two couples also floated the idea of eventually sharing a home.

Before the child’s birth in 2008 the men relocated to Melbourne to be close to the child.

When the men came to believe the women were creating obstacles to their spending time with the child, they initiated proceedings in the Federal Magistrates Court in Melbourne.

The Magistrates Court gave the men with an interim order  and the matter was transferred to the Family Court.

In the Family Court the women claimed the child was distressed at spending time with the men and as a result the birth mother was under enormous stress.

A court employee observed both couples with the child and found he was comfortable and affectionate with all four adults.

“The four adults in this case are mature, intelligent, basically very good people, and all perfectly capable of contributing wonderfully to [the child’s] life,” Family Court Justice Linda Dessau found.

Dessau also found claims by the women that the child had been exposed to family violence by the men were untrue; they had exaggerated the level of conflict between the couples; and had minimised the men’s actual and intended roles in the child’s life in their evidence to court.

Dessau ruled the women continue as the child’s primary carers, but granted some weekend and school holiday access to the men.

Boers urged anyone entering a co-parenting relationship to get legal advice.

He said although not legally binding, a written co-parenting agreement was not advantageous to lesbian couples, particularly if the man involved was intended to only have a sperm donor role — it could be more advantageous for a donor in getting a parenting order than having no agreement at all.

For men in a co-parenting arrangement, a written agreement could support a claim of having concern for the care, welfare and development of a child.

Boers advised all parties entering into such an arrangement to seek counselling so they all fully understood the responsibilities they were to have towards a child, and that a court order, obtained as soon as a child was born, was the safest way to establish roles for donors.