## Facts

- A wife and her husband, while validly married, agreed to conceive a child through heterologous artificial insemination by donor (AID).
- The child was born during the marriage; the husband was listed as the father on the birth certificate.
- The parties later separated and divorced; their separation agreement and divorce decree identified the child as the couple’s child.
- The husband paid child support and exercised visitation as provided by the agreements.
- The wife remarried, and her second husband petitioned to adopt the child as a step-parent.
- The first husband refused to consent; the petitioner argued consent was unnecessary because the first husband was not the child’s biological father.

## Issues

1. Whether a husband who consented to AID during a valid marriage is a “parent” whose consent is required for the child’s adoption by the mother’s new husband.

## Decision

- The court held that a child born of consensual AID during a valid marriage is the legitimate child of that marriage.
- The husband who consented to the AID procedure was the child’s lawful father and a “parent” for adoption-consent purposes.
- Because the lawful father’s consent was required and withheld, the court denied the step-parent adoption petition.

## Legal Principles

- A child conceived by consensual AID during a valid marriage is legitimate and is treated, for family-law purposes, as a child naturally conceived during that marriage.
- A consenting husband may be deemed the child’s lawful father based on consent to AID, formal acknowledgments of parentage, and prior treatment of the child as his own.
- “Parent” in adoption-consent statutes includes a lawful father established through consensual AID in marriage, not only a biological father.
- In the absence of a statutory basis to terminate parental rights, a step-parent adoption cannot proceed without the lawful father’s consent.

## Conclusion

The court refused to approve a step-parent adoption where the child was born during marriage through consensual donor insemination and the husband, treated as the lawful father, did not consent; the child’s legitimacy and the husband’s parent status made his consent a statutory prerequisite.


In re Adoption of Anonymous, 74 Misc. 2d 99, 345 N.Y.S.2d 430 (Sur. Ct. Kings Cnty. 1973)