Sperm donor or father?

Maryke Penman at Stuff writes:

A woman who couldn’t afford a sperm donor advertised for a man to father her child – and is now raising her daughter on the DPB.

The father, who visits three time a week, does not have to pay child support.

Sperm donors, even through a private arrangement, were not liable, Inland Revenue said.

I agree sperm donors should not be liable, but to my mind a sperm donor is someone who is not involved with the child at all, and is simply just a donor. Why should the taxpayer be funding his child for him? He should be paying child support.

She couldn’t afford the expense of a professional sperm agency and says arranging it herself was the last resort.

“My first choice would have been to do it the traditional way, get married, the white picket fence and the whole shebang.

“But I had been single for about 12 years and my biological clock was ticking.”

So she laid out the terms of her request online and awaited a response.

She compiled a shortlist of eight candidates who had the attributes she wanted, including eye colour, height, health background and a good IQ.

“I met with them all one by one in a very public Starbucks. Most were just ordinary, decent guys just wanting to share the love of having a child,” she says.

“I told myself if there was a mutual attraction then we would do it the old-fashioned way.

“I was single so what the hey but if not then it would be the old turkey baster or syringe.”

It was the last candidate who ticked all the boxes, she says.

The woman fell pregnant six months later.

Which sounds like they did it the old fashioned way. So again, that doesn’t sound like a sperm donor to me. It sounds like a father. I don’t think you should be able to contract out of your paternal duties.

If you want no liability for a child, then you shouldn’t know whom the mother or child is. It should be arms length. Otherwise you’re just a deadbeat dad.

An Inland Revenue spokesperson says sperm donors are not generally defined as parents under the Status of Children Act 1969 and are therefore not liable to pay childcare support.

But in this case he is clearly a parent. He visits three times a week.