An Aussie mother who met and fell in love with her sperm donor only after giving birth, is now fighting for his right to be legally recognised as the father of her child.
For Kerrie Hancox and George Deka, it’s been a back-to-front love story as the pair conceived a child together BEFORE they ever met and fell in love.
“We don’t have a very conventional kind of family. The starting point wasn’t terribly conventional and it hasn’t kind of stayed conventional in any way at all either,” Kerrie told the ABC’s Australian Story in an interview set to air tonight.
As unusual as it sounds, it wasn’t the first time it happened though. In fact Kerrie and George came forward to tell their story after hearing the story of Aminah Hart and Scott Anderson, who were also featured on Australian Story last year after they experienced a similarly unusual love story.
Aminah and Scott are now engaged, with Hollywood reportedly keen to make a movie out of their love story.
Aminah thought their situation was totally unique but it turned out that Kerrie, who lived locally to her in Victoria (and was even treated at the same Melbourne IVF clinic!) also went looking for her child’s sperm donor not long after welcoming her baby.
It was then that Kerrie met the introverted George, who had never managed to find the partner and create the family he’d been hoping for either. The pair fell in love, and one year later welcomed a second child, that they conceived together naturally.
While Kerrie and George’s tale sounds like the ultimate romantic love story, their ride hasn’t been entirely smooth. Despite the fact the George is the biological father of their youngest child Claire, because of his sperm donor status, he can’t be legally recognised as her father.
“I want Claire to be able to look at his birth certificate and look at his name there,” Kerrie said.
Kerrie and George situation makes for a uniquely complex legal predicament that has never before been tested in court.
Kerri continued: “I think the frustration that both George and I both feel is that in every way he is dad but it’s not acknowledged legally and it just seems unfair and unreasonable that that should be the case.”
For mum Kerrie, Claire is still every bit George’s daughter though.
“I see George in Claire across the nose and eyes. I think there’s a lot of things in Claire’s temperament that’s quite similar to George. She’s a calm, gentle child that loves reading.”
After seven boys, we finally had a girl through IVF!
As the demographic of single IVF seekers continues to grow, the pressure is on for Australia’s laws to be changed to accommodate continually diversifying definition of what makes up a modern family.
“Single women are by far the fastest growing user group in Australia. They are the most likely to seek contact with a donor and they’re the group that the law has thought about the least, if at all, to be honest.” Fiona Kelly, Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University Law School told the show.
“The goal of these laws is to keep donors and recipients apart” Fiona continued. “But I think that that often ignores the reality of people’s emotional investment in what they’re experiencing.
“There’s a potential gap and I think that, as people search for donors, that we are going to have situations where the law simply doesn’t envisage the scenario that they’ve raised.
Fiona perhaps puts it best when she says: “You can make all the laws you want but you can’t control for human nature. We can’t control people’s desire for connection and a desire to ask question about who is family, who are my family?”
Kerrie Hancox and George Deka will tell their full amazing story on Australian Story on Monday March 2 at 8pm on ABC.
