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Biological clocks ticking, some women are approaching British Columbia’s family lawyers with a dilemma: They want to have a baby, but their male partners do not.
Can they conceive a child using the sperm of an anonymous donor and raise that child as a single parent — even while living with their husbands or boyfriends? Can their male partners essentially opt out of being a dad?
If they’re single, can they use sperm from a friend without having that friend be declared a parent?
These are some of the intriguing — and complicated — scenarios being discussed by family lawyers in this province, as more clients stray from the nuclear-family model.
“All of us wonder, what would it look like to have a family where you’ve got a couple that are a couple but only one person who’s going to be a parent. How’s that going to play out? It’s interesting,” said Monique Shebbeare, a Vancouver fertility and family lawyer.
Even though B.C. has very progressive laws when it comes to accommodating alternative family models — such as same-sex...