Legal parenthood, birth registration and the rights of someone with a gender recognition certificate

[IwantToRetire]

FZ v MZ & FZ v Y Council concerned complex questions of legal parenthood, birth registration and the rights of a transgender man (FZ) who held a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

The background was:

1. FZ is a transgender man who obtained a GRC in 2021.
2. FZ married MZ in 2022.
3. FZ and MZ had two children together, both through artificial insemination using a known donor, but not through a licensed UK fertility clinic.
4. The first child, DZ, was conceived before the marriage.
5. The second child, AZ, was conceived after the marriage.
FZ and MZ registered DZ’s birth at the registry office, relying on FZ’s GRC to register him as the father. However, this was legally incorrect as DZ’s conception occurred outside of a licensed fertility clinic, and MZ and FZ were not married at the time.

The original birth certificate was quashed and FZ was granted a step-parent adoption order, establishing him as DZ’s legal parent. The matter of AZ, however, was more complex, principally due to how the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFEA) 2008 and the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA 2004) interact.

Article coninues at https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/legal-updates/modern-parents-who-fall-between-the-legal-gaps/5125741.article

You are misunderstanding what was being discussed.

“64.Ms Fottrell distinguishes McConnell on the basis of the fact that Mr McConnell gave birth to the child, and as a matter of biological reality was therefore the child's mother. This was central to the Court of Appeal, and the President's, reasoning in their decisions. Therefore, the justification of the child's right to biological certainty as to their parentage, and the need to maintain a coherent and consistent statutory scheme, was very clear. She submits that the same reasoning applies in OH and AH and Others, where in both cases the applicants were seeking to reverse the biological reality of the child's parentage, by reason of their legally recognised transgender status. She refers to Dunne and Browne in the Cambridge Law Journal (2024 p. 490), who describe this as "… in contexts where legal parenthood is determined by gendered biological contributions to reproduction: legal motherhood due to gestation and legal fatherhood due to a genetic contribution".

65.However, in the present case, the Applicant has no biological link to the child and seeks to be registered as the father on the basis of his marriage to the mother. Therefore, the concern that lay at the heart of the Courts' concerns in McConnell, to retain what might be described as the biological reality of parenthood, does not apply here”

It was more the term biological reality being bandied round, as that is generally regarded as an optional extra and deeply transphobic