The 49-year-old man and the child’s mother, who was single at the time, had been friends when he agreed to donate his semen in 2006.
They arranged to raise the child together but the pair later had a falling out, his lawyers said. The woman’s lawyers argued he was not the father.
However, the man was identified as a parent on the girl’s birth certificate and she called him “Daddy”.
On Wednesday, the High Court of Australia ruled that he had the legal status of a parent, effectively preventing the family from moving to New Zealand.
The judgement said: “To characterise the biological father of a child as a ‘sperm donor’ suggests that the man in question has relevantly done no more than provide his semen to facilitate an artificial conception procedure on the basis of an express or implied understanding that he is thereafter to have nothing to do with any child born as a result of the procedure.
“Those are not the facts of this case.”
Read it all (my emphasis).
Sperm donor is child’s legal father, Australian court rules https://t.co/e7V8MWLR65
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) June 19, 2019