MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Child of polyamorous family may have 2 dads and 1 mom, Buenos Aires judge rules

“Paternity and maternity should not only be objective and static concepts, where the affective component is legally irrelevant,” the judge argued.

A Buenos Aires judge has issued a ruling legally recognizing the right of a polyamorous partnership to have their baby registered with two fathers and one mother.

Judge Myriam Cataldi of the National Civil Court No. 7 of the City of Buenos Aires, authorized that a baby conceived through assisted fertilization be registered under “the right to non-discrimination on the grounds of triple filiation or filial registry polyamory”, since “it was procreated in a laboratory by joining the gamete of one of the men and the one of the woman”.

The two men have been living together since 2018 and had the desire to become parents, but did not want to adopt or opt for surrogacy. They were recommended “to bet on the model of co-parenting by forming a family with a woman with the same filial desire,” due to which they created a website to search for a like-minded female candidate until one showed up and interviews online and face-to-face ensued. With everything arranged, they took their case to the courts.

Despite opposition from the Civil Registry and the Public Ministry, the judge decreed the last paragraph of Article 558 of the Civil Code was unconstitutional and granted the petition filed before her.

“It is not taking away the value of the genetic load of each one, but displacing the importance of the relationships that before were given only by blood ties towards the heart of love and solidarity. The Court has pointed out that the American Convention does not establish a closed concept of family, nor does it protect only one particular model of the family,” the judge said.

“Reality demonstrates on a daily basis that not in every family there is a mother or a father figure, although this does not prevent the family from providing the necessary well-being for the development of children,” she added.

“Guaranteeing the best interests of the child implies effectively protecting the right to a filiation in accordance with the volitional reality expressed by all the participants of this family life project, in which he/she will be included as one more of the family. The possibility of revising the biologicist paradigm of filiation, added to the necessary deconstruction of filial binarism, implies raising issues of such rupture, as at the time were same-sex marriages and adoption by same-sex couples,” she went on.

“Paternity and maternity should not only be objective and static concepts, where the affective component is legally irrelevant,” the judge argued.