Two DI News Stories: Kansas, Monica Cruz

Kansas

Over the last few weeks I have read a number of articles regarding a case in Kansas where a known donor was used by a lesbian couple where he signed papers giving up his right to the child but now the Kansas courts are requiring him to pay child support.

In short, Kansas law does not allow a same sex partner to adopt the child of their partner.  Louis Sternberg's blog summarized the best how the Courts came to their decision and the reason why.  It has nothing to do with their position on donor conception:

When [the birth mother] applied for state health insurance for the child, Kansas demanded to know the identity of the father. Kansas law, like New York, allows the state to seek child support on behalf of a custodial parent when that custodial parent is receiving certain state-sponsored financial benefits such as health insurance. Angela de Rocha, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department for Children and Families said “all individuals who apply for taxpayer-funded benefits through DCF are asked to cooperate with child support enforcement efforts” and that “DCF is required by statute to establish paternity and then pursue child support from the non-custodial parent.”

Sternberg's blog actually states that under Kansas law that if the insemination was done by a licensed physician (it was not here) the donor would have been held harmless.

New York law considers me the natural father to my two DI children as I was married to their mother when they were born.  Now that I am not here I am paying child support.  No chance for me to get our donor to help out I guess. Lucky guy.


Monica Cruz

I was amused to learn that model Monica Cruz, the actress Penelope Cruz's nearly identical younger sister, decided that she no longer wanted to wait to find the man of her dreams to start a family and turned to donor insemination.   There are a lot of comments I can make to this story but many of them would get me in trouble.  I wish her and her baby well.  

2013 - Happy New Year

2012 has come and gone.  I only posted here 5 times in 2012.  I had hoped I would improve on my 2011 count of 41.  But it was not to be.  I am sitting here wondering what does that mean?   My divorce was finalized early in 2012 so that was not an issue in my writing less as it had been in 2009 and 2010.  Overall it must be that the issues of donor conception were not as pressing to my day to day life as they had been in earlier years. 

I also have not contributed as much to the Yahoo DI Dads group as I had in prior years.  At his point the group is somewhat self supporting.  There are a key group of dads there who are great and provide great feedback for those men looking for help.

So why do I come back here?  Probably because as my kids get older I expect the questions to increase.  They have not yet.  My kids are now going on 11 and 9.  Their relationships with their half siblings are those of distant cousins.  In truth they have been asking to see their female half sibling as it's been a couple of years since they have physically gotten together. 

But what about me?  What are my needs, my thoughts?  I am not sure.  When I see news stories on the topic I certainly have defiined opinions, defined positions.  I have not been active in the donor conception community in some time.

I still toy with the desire to memorialize all this into a book, updating key posts from over the years, and my thoughts.  I expect my activity will increase as the teenage years hit.  In the mean time I wanted to ask what topics you as the visiting reader would want addressed that perhaps you have not found if you have surfed through this site.  I apologize as the early years of this site did not have topic tagging as the recent years do.

Thank you and Happy 2013 !