17-05-2006, 11:57 AM
NewsRoom Wrote:A transsexual whose 17-year marriage to an heiress was nullified when the wife discovered that her husband was a woman is not legally a parent of her 14-year-old daughter born from donor sperm, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
The female-to-male transsexual, referred to in court as Mr J, is now in law a man under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act and can lawfully marry a woman if he wishes.
But three appeal judges held that because at the time of his "marriage" to Mrs C, now 49, in 1977 he was still a woman, he had no parental rights.
The law required that when a woman conceived and gave birth through artificial insemination by donor, the other party to the marriage must be a man in order to qualify as a parent, the judges said.
Mr J was still a woman when the child was conceived in 1991 and, as there was no legal marriage, he could not be "a party" to it.
The judges that heard Mr J was born with gender dysmorphia, underwent hormone treatment and had breasts removed before, at the age of 30, he met and married Mrs C, then aged 20 and from a wealthy background.
He concealed his true gender from her for 17 years, using a home-made artificial penis for sex. It was not until she began divorce proceedings that Mrs C saw her "husband's" birth certificate describing him as female, and realised she had married a transsexual. At a previous Court of Appeal hearing in 1996, Mr J failed in a bid for a share of the marriage wealth, including a £400,000 home.
In yesterday's case, Mr J, now 59, failed in his bid for a declaration of parenthood, despite the fact that he now has a gender recognition certificate and a birth certificate recording his birth as a male. Dismissing Mr J's challenge, Lord Justice Wall said the court accepted that he was now a man in the eyes of the law.
But he continued: "That does not, however, mean that he was not a woman on 17 July 1977, the date that he entered into the ceremony of marriage with Mrs C."
He said he had never been legally married to Mrs C and in those circumstances was not entitled to a declaration of parenthood.
Lords Justices Thorpe, Wall and Richards ordered that neither party should be identified to protect the daughter and an elder child, who was also born after artificial insemination, and is now 18.
The judges said how the children were to learn the truth about their origins was sensitive. The mother, now remarried and who wishes her husband to adopt her children, has agreed to take advice from a psychiatrist before explaining their background to them. Daily Telegraph
I think this person deserves to be shot. The anguish they have caused the wife, the anguish and maybe initial shame they will cause the daughter does not bear thinking.
Everyone to themselves, however, this was plain deception.
Saying that......I want to know how through all their marriage she never realised that 'he' had a false ummm....appendage!! :confused: