A four-year-old
boy is going to the European Court of Human Rights after Switzerland ruled his
two dads cannot both be registered as his parents.
And he’s hired
a top lawyer with a history of winning such cases.
His proud dads
conceived their child with the help of an anonymous egg donor and a surrogate
in California.
They are now
suing for discrimination and intrusion into private and family matters,
according to German website queer.de, because Swiss authorities are failing to
recognize both men as the legal parents.
In May, the
Swiss Federal Supreme Court, Switzerland’s highest court, returned a two to
three verdict on the matter, ruling only the man whose sperm was used to
fertilize the egg could be listed as the legal parent.
The decision
struck down the ruling of Switzerland’s St Gallen administrative court, which
initially said the men could be listed as the child’s legal parents.
According to
ggg.at, the couple’s lawyers see the Supreme Court’s decision as punishment for
the men’s decision to travel abroad to use a surrogate. Under Swiss law,
surrogacy is illegal.
But, under the
Swiss legal code, the lawyers argue, the courts can’t ‘punish’ them despite
what they did, as the surrogacy was in the US.
The surrogate
mom is making no claims over the young boy.
The couple’s
four-year old son has joined the action, queer.de reports, with his own lawyer
arguing the child’s case.
Representing
the child is Helmut Graupner, an Austrian lawyer and president of the LGBTI
organization Rechtskommittee Lambda who has fought, and mostly won, a number of
similar cases.
As only one of
the men is listed as his legal parents, the boy has no rights in regards to
care, alimentation or inheritance from his other dad. Graupner argues the child
is suffering from this lack of official bond.
Under Swiss law, same-sex
couples can’t adopt children together, meaning that, should the legal father
come to harm or die, his partner would not be able to adopt his own son.
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