Known donation and co-parenting

If you are conceiving with a known donor or co-parent, it is important to know where you stand, as the law can be complicated.

Who are the legal parents?

If you are both legal parents (either from birth or after adopting your child), your donor or co-parent is not your child’s legal father. Under UK law, a child can only have two legal parents, so having two female parents means that there is no legal father. Find out whether you are both legal parents.

If you are not both legal parents, either your donor is the legal father or your child has only one legal parent (the birth mother). This depends on the detail of your situation:

If you conceive at home, the donor is your child’s legal father.
If you conceive through a clinic, your donor’s fatherhood might be excluded by the licensed sperm donation rules, but the position depends on the facts, including how much involvement he intends.

If your known donor or co-parent is the legal father, he is financially responsible for your child and your child has rights of inheritance from him. However, if he is not named on the birth certificate he does not have parental responsibility, which in practice limits his status and affects his role in any adoption application you make.

Known donor disputes: what if we fall out?

Known donation disputes, sadly, happen from time to time. Typically problems arise because the father (or fathers) want a more significant role in the child's life than the mothers feel happy with. This might be to do with the level and regularity of contact, or how everyone sees their respective roles (or a combination of both). Questions of child maintenance may also arise. Find out more about known donor disputes.

Do we need a preconception agreement?

If you are planning a known donation or co-parenting arrangement, putting in place a written agreement is a good idea. There are broadly two types of preconception agreements:

Donor agreements, which are designed to minimise the donor's legal rights and status
Co-parenting agreements, which envisage shared parenting and seek to clarify how the arrangement will work in practice.

Which is most appropriate for you depends on your situation.

Written agreements are not binding on the family court (the child's welfare is always the paramount consideration), and the courts have given different levels of weight to what was agreed at the outset in different cases. Find out more about recent cases on donor disputes.

Preconception agreements also have real value in facilitating discussions and helping everyone to enter into an arrangement with clarity and consensus. In practice, this is enormously powerful as a means of avoiding later disputes.