In a landmark case, the Court of First Instance in Hong Kong has ruled in favour of a lesbian couple’s parental recognition of their son conceived through fertility treatment as the couple seeks to register their names together on their son’s birth certificate.
On Tuesday, September 9, Judge Russell Coleman of the High Court handed down a judgment determining that the lesbian couple’s son’s rights to privacy and family are infringed due to the inaccurate depiction of his family relationship, and that recognising only one parent’s name on his birth certificate casts doubt upon his family structure.
Identified only as ‘R’ and ‘B’, the lesbian couple underwent reciprocal in vitro fertilisation (RIVF) in South Africa in 2020. Using a fertilised egg provided by R, B carried the pregnancy to term and the boy, K, was born in Hong Kong in 2021. After the boy’s birth, the couple discovered they could not register both of their names on his birth certificate, and only B’s name could be registered as the boy’s mother as she had delivered him.
R and B initially filed a legal petition in 2022, seeking a reinterpretation of the Parent and Child Ordinance to officially recognise R as K’s parent, and were only told that R was recognised as a ‘parent at common law’, without further explanation of what rights that might entail. In 2023, after their request to the Department of Justice to amend their son’s birth registration to include R as a parent was denied, the couple sought a judicial review.
Coleman, who heard the recent case, remarked that the earlier court ruling was ‘simply empty’ as R would remain a nominal parent without legal rights, and that R’s omission from K’s birth certificate could create confusion about her parental status and their parent-child relationship, leading to potential embarrassment and harm to K’s dignity.
Coleman’s ruling is unprecedented in Hong Kong where same-sex partnerships registered abroad are recognised only for purposes of spousal benefits such as taxation, inheritance rights, and civil service benefits. Same-sex marriage in the city is not legally recognised.
It is still unclear what direct impact Coleman’s judgment will have on the couple’s ongoing quest to amend their son’s birth registration, and whether the couple can now move forward with their goal unopposed. For the most part, lawmakers in Hong Kong continue to stand in fierce opposition to recognising the rights of same-sex couples, with the latest update coming in the form of the rejection of the Registration of Same-sex Partnerships Bill on Wednesday, September 10, which would grant rights to same-sex couples whose marriages or civil unions are registered abroad. 71 members of the Legislative Council voted against the proposal, 14 in favour, and one abstained.
Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal handed down a landmark ruling in September 2023 that urged the Hong Kong government to develop a framework to recognise same-sex unions, leading to the Registration of Same-sex Partnerships Bill debate. Meanwhile, the October 27 deadline given by the top court looms near.
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