The Court of Appeal has ruled that a gay father can have a fuller role in his son's life who is being brought up by a lesbian couple.
As The Telegraph reported Lord Justice Thorpe said:
"It is generally accepted that a child gains by having two parents. It does not follow from that that the addition of a third is necessarily disadvantageous".
The focus is on the welfare of the child, not the sometimes selfish wishes of the parents. The lesbian mothers wanted the gay father to have a subordinate role and for them to be the primary parents. The Judge stated that given all 3 parents had high powered jobs it appeared that the nanny was the child's main carer. The Judge also rejected that an agreement reached before the child was born could be enforced as life is not so simple - people change, circumstances change and the child had a lot to gain from a relationship with his father.
What happens if the lesbians split up? A three way care plan? Shared parenting could get complicated.
Research suggests that a child's secret wish is for their parent's to reconcile - in this case the biological parents did have a marriage of convenience. Is this child going to grow up wishing for the impossible as well as the highly unlikely that most children of divorce secretly wish for?
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