SEMINAL CASE: From the Houston Press

On paper, their initial agreement had the markings of an unusual but successful partnership. He was gay. She was lesbian. They were both unmarried. According to her attorney, they did not know each other all that well and had met through a hairdresser. She wanted badly to conceive a child, and he was willing to oblige.
So when Sharon Sullivan and Brian Keith Russell signed a "co-parenting agreement" in February 2003, these star-crossed nonlovers probably had good reason to hope for a scientifically engineered, legally linked, happy family. Two families, actually -- two families that would be separate (but equal), as their contract spelled out.

Russell would provide Sullivan with his sperm so that she could attempt artificial insemination, and she would keep trying until it produced offspring.

"Any child born as a result of the donor insemination procedure will be the child of Brian Keith Russell as if he and Sharon Sullivan were married at the time of conception," the agreement states. "Russell will be named as the father on the child's birth certificate." On top of that, the two parties agreed to share child support and custody, with Sullivan furnishing the primary residence for the kid.

It wasn't your typical boy-meets-girl scenario, and by the time their daughter was born on March 2, 2004, their pact had fallen apart. In the beginning, the two had just set out to make a baby -- albeit in a hands-off, nontraditional way. By the end of their precedent-setting court battle, they might just make legal history as well.

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posted by Eve at 3:03 PM VOTE

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