BGH judgment: sperm donors may request contact with children

After a private sperm donation for a lesbian couple, the donor can have a right to contact his child. This also applies if the mother’s partner has adopted the child, ruled the Federal Court of Justice.

A private sperm donor who has made it possible for a lesbian couple to become parents can have a right of access to their child. The Federal Court of Justice pronounced this judgment. The donor also has the right if the mother’s partner has adopted the child in the meantime.

Official sperm bank or private donor

In the case of sperm donation via an official sperm bank, it is legally excluded from the outset that the donor can later assert his position as a father. If the donor comes from the mother’s private sphere, however, the matter is more complicated.

In the case from Berlin that has now been decided, two women in registered civil partnerships had fulfilled their desire to have children. The year after the birth, the partner adopted the child, and the sperm donor agreed. He had regular contact for the first five years, and the child also knows who his father is. Only when the man wanted more intensive contacts did the break occur. He wants to pick up the child every 14 days and spend the afternoon with him alone. He had applied to the responsible local court in vain, the Berlin Chamber Court rejected his complaint – there is no legal basis for a right of access in his case.

“Serious interest in the child”

The highest family judges of the BGH see it differently: According to their decision, the sperm donor is to be treated like any other man whose child is adopted by the mother’s husband. That means, according to the Civil Code, he has a right of access if he “has shown serious interest in the child” and “the contact serves the best interests of the child”.

Whether this is the case here has to be checked again by the Court of Appeal. The BGH emphasized that today’s seven-year-old child must also be asked for his or her opinion.

(AZ: XII ZB 58/20)