Platonic couple who live apart can be child’s legal parents

A MARRIED couple who have a platonic relationship and live in different homes have been made the legal parents of a child born following a foreign surrogacy arrangement.

The most senior family court judge in England and Wales ruled that the couple’s relationship is no bar to them being made the child’s legal parents.

Sir James Munby, president of the Family Division of the High Court, has made a parental order after analysing the case at a family court hearing in London, where Deirdre Fottrell QC, who represented the couple, had told him that their relationship was “platonic and not romantic”.

Sir James said the unnamed couple’s relationship satisfied the requirements of legislation governing marriage and arrangements relating to surrogate children. “The applicants were indeed, and remain, married to each other,” he said in a ruling published yesterday.

“Their relationship is deep and of long standing. But, one of them is, as the other has always known, gay, and their relationship and marriage is thus, as Ms Fottrell puts it, platonic and not romantic.”

The judge added: “There can be no question of the marriage being a sham. In short, the marriage is a marriage. The fact that it is platonic, and without a sexual component, is, as a matter of long-established law, neither here nor there and in truth no concern of the judges or of the State.”

Sir James said a sexual relationship was not necessary for a valid marriage.

“The applicants have different homes, with each of which the child is very familiar,” he said. “When the child is not with both parents, the child’s time is split between them and their homes. The child does not live with anyone else.”