## Facts

- Julie Strnad (wife) and Antoine Strnad (husband) disputed the husband’s continuing visitation with a child born during the marriage.
- The court proceeded on the assumed facts that the wife was artificially inseminated with the husband’s consent and that the child was not genetically related to the husband.
- The child lived with the mother; the husband sought to maintain a parent-child relationship through visitation previously allowed by court order.
- The mother sought to restrict or eliminate visitation, asserting the husband was not the biological father and should not be treated as a parent or guardian.
- After trial, the court considered whether new evidence offered by the mother warranted changing the existing visitation arrangement.
- In a later enforcement proceeding, the mother removed the child to Oklahoma and did not produce the child for the ordered Sunday visits.

## Issues

1. Whether the husband should continue to have visitation with a child conceived by donor insemination during the marriage where the husband consented to the procedure.
2. Whether a consenting husband may be treated as having an adoptive or analogous parental status for visitation purposes despite the absence of a biological tie.
3. Whether a child conceived by donor insemination during marriage, with the husband’s consent, is illegitimate.
4. Whether removing the child from New York and failing to produce the child for ordered visitation supports contempt and what notice suffices for contempt proceedings.

## Decision

- The court held the husband remained entitled to visitation as previously allowed: every Sunday from 11:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., with the maternal grandmother present as custodian during visits.
- The court found the mother’s additional evidence insufficient to alter the prior visitation order and found the husband not shown to be an unfit guardian; the child’s best interests favored continued “modest visitations.”
- For visitation purposes, the court characterized the husband as having “potentially” or “semi-” adopted the child, entitling him to rights comparable to those of a formal adoptive parent (and possibly a natural parent under the circumstances).
- The court concluded that, assuming the husband consented to the insemination, the child was not illegitimate.
- The court expressly declined to decide property-right consequences of such parentage and declined to opine on the propriety of artificial insemination as a matter of morality, religion, or sociology.
- In the later enforcement ruling, the court held the visitation decree imposed a duty on the mother to produce the child in New York for Sunday visits; failure to do so constituted contempt even if the judgment did not expressly forbid out-of-state removal.
- The court held service of contempt motion papers on the mother’s attorney was sufficient where the court already had personal jurisdiction in the underlying action.

## Legal Principles

- Visitation determinations turn on the child’s best interests and the fitness of the visiting parent or parent-figure.
- A husband’s consent to donor insemination during marriage, coupled with parental assumption, may support treating him as an adoptive-analog parent for visitation purposes.
- A child conceived by donor insemination within marriage, with the husband’s consent, may be treated as legitimate despite lack of genetic connection to the husband.
- A visitation order may carry an implied obligation on the custodial parent to make the child available at the specified place and time; nonproduction can support contempt.
- In contempt proceedings arising from an existing action, notice to counsel may suffice where the court’s personal jurisdiction over the party has already been established.

## Conclusion

The court preserved the husband’s scheduled Sunday visitation and, based on his consent to donor insemination, treated the child as legitimate and the husband as a parent by adoption analogy for visitation purposes, while declining to address property consequences; it later enforced the visitation order through contempt when the mother removed the child from New York and failed to produce the child for visits.


Strnad v. Strnad, 190 Misc. 786, 78 N.Y.S.2d 390 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cnty. 1948)