Sperm donor dad sued for support

Nearly 20 years after a gay man donated his sperm to a former classmate, he’s being sued for child support in a potentially landmark case that serves as the first major test of a new Ontario law.

The first known case of a gamete donor being sued for support in Canada was supposed to return to an Ontario courtroom this week but was put over until February, when Michael Ranson’s lawyers are seeking a dismissal based on recent changes to family law.

Their argument rests on Bill 28, which became law in December and updated family law to better address reproductive technologies such as sperm donors and surrogacy — clarity that was lacking when the donation was first made almost two decades ago in a California clinic.

Ranson first met Amie Cullimore when they were in medical school and discussed the fact she wanted to have children on her own if she never married by her late 30s. He agreed to donate one day, but claims in affidavits that he never intended to be a parent.

She says the opposite and felt she had “no choice” but to serve this court order and is seeking interim financial relief throughout the trial in addition to ongoing and retroactive child support.

Cullimore notes Ranson has the means to support the now-teenagers — he makes more than $280,000 a year Canadian at his job at the World Bank in Europe, while she makes over $247,000 a year as a doctor in Ontario, according to court documents.

The potentially precedentsetting case began in a California clinic when Ranson donated sperm that would be sent to Cullimore in Ontario. It took a few years, but eventually two children were born in the early 2000s. Ranson stayed in their lives, serving as a “benevolent uncle,” in his words. But Cullimore says he “self-identified as ‘dad’ ” and, “They called him dad and always referred to him as their father.”

Though they’ve never lived together, or even in the same city, both parties agree Ranson was generous financially over the years, supporting private school costs, at least partially paying for trips for the children and putting $20,000 in an education savings account.

But they differ on many other facts. She says his parents are like grandparents, he says they haven’t seen the kids since 2010. She says she felt “obligated” to sign a written agreement giving her sole custody and all financial responsibility; he says it was her idea.

The case marks a new twist in fertility law in an age when more and more Canadians are seeking sperm and egg donors, but Cullimore’s lawyer, in an email to the National Post, said it has “nothing to do with” the fact he was a sperm donor.

Instead, her case as laid out in the court documents rests on the fact he acted as their father.

And under the law that intent is crucial. Ranson’s lawyers say a case known as AA v. BB sets a precedent in Ontario common law that protects non-biological parents of children born of reproductive technologies because they intended to be parents. (In that case, a pair of lesbian mothers sued for the right to both be acknowledged as parents alongside their sperm donor and won the right, for the first time, for more than two people to be recognized as parents). Ranson’s lawyers argue the inverse of that precedent is also true.

Bill 28, they write, “was designed, in part, to remedy exactly the kind of situation as the case at bar — where a gamete donor is sued for child support, let alone almost 20 years after the donation.”

“My relationship with the children is that of an uncle or friend, not that of a parent,” Ranson states in an affidavit. He also said the mother got the courts involved without any prior discussion.

It’s common in sperm donation cases for the man to stay tangentially involved in the offspring’s lives. In some fertility circles, it’s jokingly referred to as a “spuncle,” Ranson’s lawyers Kelly Jordan and Shirley Levitan said in the fall.

At that time, they warned a legal loophole left Ranson and any other sperm donors vulnerable to child support lawsuits such as this.

Now, in new court documents filed this week, they say Ontario’s Bill 28 has made it clear sperm donors with no intent to parent are protected.

They also argue the law was drafted with the intent to be applied retroactively because it’s “remedial” in nature and should be applied as such in this case.

For her part, the mother involved says she can’t cope with the financial burden of raising both children and, Cullimore says, the nowteenagers have been hurt both by the lack of contact with Ranson since he was served in December 2015 and the attention the trial has garnered.

None of the lawyers involved agreed to comment for this story. The Ontario attorney general’s office said it could not comment on the interpretation of the law that came into effect on Jan. 1, so it could not clarify whether Bill 28 was intended to be applied retroactively.

But legal experts say that’s not unheard of, especially in cases of family law, and certain aspects of Bill 28 were expressly designed to apply retroactively so that non-biological lesbian mothers would no longer have to adopt their own children.

Cindy Wasser, a lawyer who testified at Bill 28 hearings, said the AG’s office made it clear the adoption aspect of Bill 28 applied retroactively, although she said it’s possible this case may need to proceed further to make it clear how the new law affects the donation side of family law.

While Cullimore’s argument rests on the position that Ranson presented himself as the children’s father, his lawyers write that if he’s forced to pay child support it punishes him for something he never would have done if he’d thought he’d be on the hook financially decades down the line: