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Subscribe to RSSA Kansas man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple three years ago is fighting the state’s demand that he pay child support.
The two women raising the 3-year-old girl say they support the man, who responded to an ad they posted on the Craigslist website in 2009, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported.
The issue of child support arose when the two women broke up, and the couple applied for state services. Workers at the Kansas Department for Children and Families demanded the donor’s name and then filed a child-support claim against him, the newspaper said.
Angela Bauer, one of the mothers, told the Capital-Journal that she and her former partner, Jennifer Schreiner, support the donor, William Marotta, “in whatever action he wants to go forward with” to fight the state's demand.
"This was a wonderful opportunity with a guy with an admirable, giving character who wanted nothing more than to help us have a child," the newspaper quoted Bauer, 40, as saying. "I feel like the state of Kansas has made a mess out of the situation."
When Bauer and Schreiner, the 34-year-old birth mother, reached a deal with Marotta that did not include any payment for his sperm donation, he signed a written agreement that relinquished all parental rights and held him harmless “for any child support payments demanded of him by any other person or entity, public or private ... regardless of the circumstances or said demand,” it said.
The state argued in court papers that because the insemination wasn’t performed by a licensed physician, the contract was null and void.
When the two women split in 2010, they had eight children, including some they adopted, whom they now co-parent.
Marotta, a 43-year-old mechanic, was dragged into the dispute when the couple filed for state assistance. The state insisted that they reveal the donor’s identity, saying that if they refused to do so, their daughter would no longer be eligible for health care coverage. The women reluctantly complied, the Capital-Journal reported.
The girl’s birth certificate does not include her biological father’s name, and the Capital-Journal said that he had no contact with the girl, other than receiving occasional email updates from Bauer. Both women adopted the girl, although they had to file for adoption separately because the state does not recognize same-sex unions, the newspaper said. This means that the state also cannot collect child support from same-sex parents.
"More and more gays and lesbians are adopting and reproducing, and this, to me, is a step backward," said Bauer, who formerly supported the family financially but is no longer able to work due to a "serious illness." "I think a lot of progressive movement is happening currently in the world as far as gays and lesbians go. Maybe this is Kansas' stand against some of that."
The Capital-Journal could not reach Marotta for comment and the Kansas Department for Children and Families declined to discuss the case, citing privacy laws.
This isn’t the first time states have demanded child support from sperm donors. But in most of those cases, the sperm donor was known to the birth family – usually a man who was friendly with a lesbian couple and who agreed to help them out.
Court rulings vary
Sperm donors who donate through a sperm bank are typically protected by state parenting shield laws. But in less straight-forward cases, courts have differed on whether the men should pay up.
A Massachusetts court ruled this year that a Nigerian immigrant had to pay child support for twins conceived through artificial insemination a year after he and his wife had separated, the Patriot Ledger reported.
And In Vermont, a man who donated sperm to a female friend was required to pay child support because he maintained a relationship with the children.
Explained one of the mothers to The Associated Press in 2007: "Part of the decision came down because he was so involved with them. It wasn't that he went to the (sperm) bank and that was it. They called him Papa."
In New York, a married doctor agreed to donate sperm to a young resident and her partner in the late 1980s, only to be asked 18 years later for child support, the New York Post reported.
His undoing was sending money and cards to the child, which he would sign, “Dad” or “Daddy.” The biological father’s name was also on the birth certificate.
But in Washington state, the Court of Appeals ruled in 2004 that a donor can’t be required to pay child support unless he and the mother have signed an explicit contract.
And in Texas, an appeals court ruled in favor of a former policeman who donated sperm to a woman he had been formerly connected with. He had paid thousands of dollars in child support for twins until the court ruled in his favor.
When the lawsuit was filed in 2008, the man told McClatchy: "I was totally blown away. I was already married and had moved on with my life."
NBC's Isolde Raftery and The Associated Press contributed reporting.
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Progressives are idiots.
No, neither progressives nor conservatives are idiots. BLIND conservatives and progressives are idiots. Moderation (and knowledge) in all things.
I'll stand by my comments.
ALL progressives are idiots.
You can blindly stand by it, or you can remember our founding fathers were the progressives of their time. you can realize bill gates and steve jobs were far from being idiots. You can look at the facts and realize generalizations make oneself stupid. Don't fall into the same pit as the fringes of both of the big 2.
Don't confuse todays lot with our founding fathers. These ASSH0LES aren't fit to shine their shoes.
You could make arguments to that effect of the heads of either of the two big parties. To throw in every democrat or every republican is still idiotic and disingenuous.
I have no way to pay for it but I think I will knock up about 5 women today.
Uncle Sam has my back.
Stop donating sperm and this wouldn't be an issue. Stick with donating blood, plasma, or even a kidney if you're feeling really generous. These types of donations are badly needed and save lives.
Dump enough funds into MIT and you won't even need those donations anymore. Nanotechnology and near immortality here we come!
Patrick....... I think you said something I might agree with. Will wonders never cease.
I think it will be possible for someone born today to live to be 2 or 3 hundred years old.
the average life expectancy is projected to increase to 190 years old. Now if we could just get that nanotech to also synthesize Telomerase in droves you could expand that to 1000. Once you can fit quantum entanglement technologies on the nanoscopic scale, immortality is reached.
The technology moves faster than the ageing process. It should stay one step ahead of us. Accidental deaths and the destruction of our planet could throw in a monkey wrench.
We need to expand past our planet
That was true until the last decade or so (life spans have slowed or even gotten shorter in recent years). I have high hopes, but don't consider immortality a forgone conclusion yet.
Eng Esq, that has a great deal to do with a depressing economy and a middle class running out of spending power. Mind you this technque has yet to be implemented even in mice yet. It will be very interesting to see where this goes.
Poor kids will need a scorecard to figure this out. 2 moms/1 dad
3 dads/ 1 mom, 5 dads/ 1 mom
3 moms/1 dad, 4 half brothers /50 uncles
Mothers day must be a confusing time. Fathers day ain't no better.
The word Donor means not liable its a donation. This is government fodder invading peoples lives.
As for the gay couple who wanted a family , got one and separated well welcome to the married world. The other
partner is liable to pay for this child until adulthood. Guess you should have stayed single.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Eight kids and then go get welfare ? Sounds like Octomom in the midwest. She's doing porn now. Maybe these women can get on that bandwagon too. Rules should be changed to NO welfare for more than 2 kids. Period.
To be fair, they were perfectly well off until the one partner fell severely ill.
Good call. If someone has 2 kids and gets welfare. Then gets pregnant again,,,,,,,,,, it's on them then.
So they were counting on future earnings.
Don't count your Chickens,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
MC, to again, be completely fair, the partner's job was stable and showed no signs of disappearing in the market. It's okay to count your chickens when the egg shells are cracking open, even if they're not fully emerged. Now, I'll admit 8 children is excessive beyond all normal reasons, but if this were a family of 3 kids you would be more sympathetic.
Yes . I would.
8 children is stupid.
There are families with more than eight kids collecting welfare in Utah. Those polygamists are clear examples of people who make as many babies as humanly possible and not identify the fathers in order to collect welfare. "Bleeding The Beast" they call it, the "beast" being the government.
Maybe if you have a kid you need to pay a margiinal fee (say $2000) which goes into an insurance fund. If you cannot pay the fee you are required to provide labor to the state for the amount owed in the 9 months preceding the birth. Fail to do so results in sterilization. How does that sound?
I'm all for personal liberty, but not if it means you avoid responsibility. I think this fee would provide a safety net for kids, disincentives people from having kids they cannot afford, and maybe weed out the deadbeats before they have 20 kids.
Of course this would need to be coupled with free birth control options. As a taxpayer, I'd love my taxes going to such causes.
Engesq, I'd support that too, but you'd have the republicans decrying infringement of liberties before you finished explaining it to them.
MCGusto: You do realize that some of these 8 children are foster children. The children were placed with them because the foster agency felt that they were able to provide for the children. Evidently, there financial status was quite well off prior to the woman becoming ill.
Guess what, most people count on future earnings - not just in determining if they can have children, but also if they can buy a house, car, etc., etc. If people did not count on future earnings, then no one would ever have a child, a home, a car, etc., etc.
This ruling should dry up the sperm well in Kansas.
Lesbians confuse me. They don't like men, but they try to look like men.
They say they are not sexually attracted to men , yet the use plastic penises for sex.
I have never seen a lesbian with a female blow up doll. Never satisfy each other with a plastic vagina.
They always revert back to a penis to get what they need. whether for sexual satisfaction or sperm.
Why do they try to look like men?
You're working with a very small sect of lesbians mind you. And have you ever seen a plastic vagina? I don't know, but a lack of warm blood flow and sponginess might make the use of one very uncomfortable for a lesbian. Also, I'm not aware of lesbians needing dildos for sexual satisfaction. Maybe as a variation to usual activities, but I'm far from an expert in this area.
You think a plastic penis has warm blood?
It's nature.
Vaginas and penises are designed to work together.
Dumb bigots confuse me. I never understood why they were so concerned with other people's sex lives or gender roles, or why those bigots feel they need special legal rights and privileges which are denied to the people they hate. Apparently the bigots realize that they can't compete on a level playing field.
You like to stereotype a lot. I know a number of very unmanly lesbians. And while I don't know a ton about their sex lives, they suggested a vibrating massager to my wife for when I'm on business trips (not a plastic dildo).
Maybe you should realize the world is not all black and white.
I have a lot of sex. I have a lot of freaky friends. It still confuses me. I never said they were wrong.
MC, true, but what is also true is that contact between genitalia of either persuasion provides very pleasurable stimulation due to the thousands of nerve endings acting together in an electromagnetic storm of signals. You fall in love with the person, and no one has control over who they fall in love with. If we could so easily control who we are attracted to, the world would be without war and without divorce or envy. That's the reality of nature itself.
MC, I believe you are only the fourth person I have ever met in my life who could admit his disconnect with homosexuality and not be directly hateful to people who engage in it. I tip my hat to you. You are a rarity and we need more people like you.
Your confusion Gusto, is brought on by your lack of true sight. You are blinded by preconceived notions based on stereotypes.
Not all lesbians dislike men or try to look like men. Everyone is different.
As far as vaginal penetration. What woman doesn't like that, gay or straight? I don't think you can use the mechanics of sex as a basis for some anti gay argument you've got going on in your head.
I never said I was anti gay. But being gay does not allow a person to naturally make a child.
2 lesbians can not make a baby. It is impossible.
They need sperm.
LJ, you need to calm down. He's not a biggot. He's admitted he has a cognitive disconnect, but he accepts lesbians for who they are. That's the true sign of a person on the road to enlightenment. I have to bow out for lunch. These quantum bits don't want to entangle properly. Someone probably left on another piece of equipment somewhere in the room. It sucks having to use such sensitive equipment.
Well sure they do, just like any woman seeking to have a child.
I don't get your point. Do you have one?
Thanks Patrick. Gay doesn't bother me as far as the sex part.
The making a family part is a little more confusing.
True, but I'm unclear what the point of this statement is. The ability to procreate has not been a standard of a relationship's validity since the middle ages.
MC, that is where the human's natural desire to be a parent comes in. We always want to pass on our values to the next generation, be it our own kids or someone else's. Now, I'd honestly advocate adoption until the foster care system is emptied, but I still believe it is up to the parents to decide.
Maybe you didn't need to explicitly state it, but.....
Skrekk, please read everything he wrote. He's not a hater. He accepts gays and lesbians but is simply confused by them. That's a lot better than most.
I suggest you read some of his other comment history in other threads. He's quite clearly an ignorant bigot, although not nearly as vile as some I've seen.
Here's one example, in response to a "carpet munchers" comment:
And in response to an article about the spouse of a lawfully married gay couple seeking admission to a military spouses club:
Shrek. They weren't legally married. And the sex act they were referring to is called Tribbing. They literally were tribers.
It isn't an insult, it is a position. Like reverse cowboy, 69, missionary, the Jack hammer, doggy style...........
I've been in threesomes and more. It's all flesh mixed together. get over it.
Ummmm......yes they were, as it stated in the very first sentence of the article:
For some reason known only to yourself you chose to ignore the fact that the couple was legally married. That fact was central to the issue as well as the homophobia the club expressed when it decided to change the rules only when a same-sex spouse wished to join.
It's Kansas what do you expect? One of the backward states.
Dorothy isn't in Kansas anymore and this is why.
Is the court going after the fathers of those adopted kids?
Just when you thought Kansas was bad enough with its West Baptist Church aberration, it shows how stupid it can be with pursuing child support from a sperm donor.
I thought those guys were from Missouri.
There are people born with missing parts, too, who can't make babies, because your god created them that way.
Yep, take away accountability, responsibility and reasoning and what do you have? Two Man-hating women shoving their responsibility off on the taxpayer or even worse, the one with the swingin' meat. It's all good till the bills come, then it's help me I'm just a girl! Welcome one and all to the new age of the liberated woman!
Care to substantiate the removal of accountability and responsibility? I can agree with reasoning, as 8 kids is far too many to have at one time, but still.
Sounds like they both assumed accountability and responsibility for all the children, which would be especially difficult in a backwards and bigoted state like Kansas where they put up extra hurdles for gays to adopt.
They applied for aid to care for them.
I think they were passing along the accountability.
To a point, but remember they had their finances in order to take care of these kids, and the loss of a job is a lot easier to work around than getting severely ill and being unable to work. It would have meant fiscal belt tightening, but they would have managed. I will say lack of reasoning and simply bad luck took the lion's share of blame for this one.
They applied for Medicaid for the dependent child because the primary breadwinner was seriously ill and unable to work.
That's why Medicaid exists.
If they were trying to avoid accountability they wouldn't each have assumed financial liability for the kids by adopting them. Sounds like they're both very responsible and ethical, more so than you are.
skrekk, let's not hurl insults. You have a perspective, so does he. Now both of you bring the facts to the table and put together a reasonable picture.
I had 1 kid . That is all I could afford. She is now finishing her education.
I would say that is more responsible than collecting 8 children and hoping you never have an income problem.
Hope for the best prepare for the worst I always say.
One kid is a big problem if you lose your income due to a serious illness. You likely would have had to do the same thing this couple did to get by, and you likely would seek help from the state to cover health care for your child.
Seriously dude, are you criticizing the woman because she's gay or because she got seriously ill and lost her income? Obviously the state foster care system and adoption system thought the couple made good parents and had sufficient resources before the illness occurred, and they know a hell of a lot more about the particular circumstance than you do.
What's next, going after blood donors to pay for someone's back taxes?
Again, we see first hand how feminism is a complete failure in light of the reality on the ground.
Man's sperm is more valuable than a woman's anything, as it turns out, and the only thing to help her in her fit of freedom, having it all, going totally grrl, is a man.
there's your truth in numbers.
Yet men are not playing nice with this new found arrogance of the female mutants.
but the truth is, women are not capable of caring for thier own messes - they need - read this Allread? - NEED men to get through life.
Wow, where to begin , ha, that little diatribe of yours was very revealing.
You kind is will fade into obscurity, and in your place, are men who appreciate and love women as equals. It's a far more rewarding place to be. Try it.
Actually, Patrick's introduction of the Whip tail lizard is germane. Gusto asked the question first, to show him females that can reproduce without sperm, and Patrick responded quite logically. The door was opened he just stepped through it. Now you pound on him for being successful. Master debaters, you are not.
If you look at the DNA and RNA of all living things animal, vegetable yudda yudda, you will see similarities.
Kansas is anti gay and is using this action to try to keep couples from having children by scaring off sperm donors.
Quit making (or donating sperm to make) babies you can't afford! @!$%# happens, including losing your job, and the state shouldn't be expected to fill in everytime we run into trouble. This nation was built on hard work and self sufficiency, and we're taking ourselves down with our self-victimization and expectations of the state. We want a government to help us when we need it, but we don't want to pay for it! I wonder how many tea party members of Congress are form Kansas? People vote against their own self interests!
So people shouldn't have any kids because some day they might lose their job?
Makes total sense.
A while back Kansas passed a law banning any form of sharia law in the state. Discrimination against gays is part of sharia law therefore going after the sperm donor for child support IS sharia law which Kansas has banned!
That is stupid.
Iowa, I'm sorry but you need to heavily substantiate that before I'm going anywhere near that conclusion.
Iowa-Man has it exactly right. Here's a link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/25/kansas-governor-signs-bil_n_1547145.html
And yet Kansas still enforces a wide variety of Christian sharia laws, from blue laws to Jim Crow laws against gays.
By the way, the Kansas anti-sharia law bill is almost certainly unconstitutional because it selectively targets "foreign law", not because it prohibits religious law being enforced by our secular government. The dumb bigots in Kansas seem unaware that their Christian sharia laws are also "foreign law".
It also has the unconstitutional side effect of prohibiting Catholic Canon law or Jewish Halacha law from being used to form joint divorce agreements.
Oh my, I'm now a believer.
Well, Hardie you did it again. How can this "odd" couple be so demanding as to blaming the State for "making a mess" of things when their "liberal and Democrat thinking culture are the mess" that has become a problem to the Nation. Hopefully the remainder of the States will use this case to deny any other couple from bringing on a child into this world for their satisfaction and then just ending their "marriage" and stick it to the State taxpayers to take care of the child! If anything, the one that did not have the child should pay the child support and not the donor.
Only the abnormal homosexual freaks would advertise for a sperm donor on craigslist. Even more reason they shouldn't be able to marry or adopt.
Many people advertise for sperm donor's in papers and craigslist. By your logic any infertile heterosexual couple should also be unable to adopt or get married.
Thankfully, the requirement of procreation for a marriage went away some 400 years ago.
E E , in what country?
Laws and religions are different everywhere.
America wasn't even a country 400 years ago.
Which culture are you talking about?
Ummmm.....the US?
Just an FYI, marriage is about property rights and kinship rights. Procreation has never been a requirement for marriage in the US.
I'm sorry that the lesbian couple did not stay together, but I don't see how that the "donor" is responsible. If both women adopted the child then it's the other womans job to help support her former wife and thier child.
One parent gets very ill, bills mount, stress... these things lead to breakups in all kids of relationships. Still sad though. I think the illness resulted in the other woman being unable to fully support the kids, hence them seeking state help for that 3 month period.
The STATE DEMANDS....What Bullsh** is this? This is just wrong no matter what you think....Gays,Straight or whatever the mudshark is in your mythology. A person donates sperm for what ever reason and he gets sued? No wonder this country is going to hell in a hand bag....arrrrh
Welcome to the dumbing down of america brought to you by No Child Left Behind, drafted entirely by George W Bush Jr and passed by a majorily republican congress. Also, it's a heavily red state, what did you expect?
No......It sounds like the THREE OF YOU made a mess out of the situation.
Are these people freakin' serious? You got to be kidding me... this is going to dry up any sperm donations in the future... these two women should be tar and feathered... the judicial system should just throw this out as being totally ridiculous...
The world has plenty of sperm.
It's not the two women going after this guy, it's the state! Two words for you; "reading comprehension!"
Why? They aren't asking for the child support, the state is pursuing it. The woman support the man in his fight against the state.
I think they should have adopted 5,000 kids and then sent the bill to the state.
Gusto, I am sorry to have mistaken your meaning. My bad.
I'd actually like to see that just for the social experiment and posterity.
Lj........... about what? I've made a lot of comments.
Apology accepted.
Pat . thanks. You went a whole page without talking about lizards.
So about those whiptail lizards in new mexico...
It's true what the ducks can do.
They have penises shaped like corkscrews.
The female can reject the RAPE sperm. I forget all the mechanics involved.
God bad images.