Karlsruhe, Germany – In two recent decisions, the German Federal Justice Court has ruled on transgender parental designation in children’s birth certificates. In the first case a transgender men wanted to be listed as “Father” on his child’s birth certificate, in the second case a transgender women wanted to be also listed as mother.
The court ruled in both cases, that a mother on a birth certificate can only be the person who has born the child while the father can only be the person providing semen.
In the first case, a transgender men, who had legally changed his name and gender in 2011 had decided to have a child and stopped hormone treatment to conceive. The child was born in 2013 and he requested to be listed as father in the birth certificate which had been declined be the local registrar who listed him using his old name and female designation. Two previous lower court decisions confirmed the registrars decision.
In their decision, the Judges stated that the child’s well being takes precedence and it should not have listed two fathers in their birth certificate. The transsexualism of the parents should be irrelevant to the child.
The petitioner in the second case had frozen her sperm prior to starting hormone replacement therapy. She had already legally changed her name and gender several years before the couple decided to have children. Both wanted to be listed as mother which has been declined by the local register. They filed a motion in a lower court which has been declined before the case moved to the federal court.
These two decisions are seen as another legal backlash against the transgender community in Germany.
Image attribution:
By Thomas Steg. The original uploader was TSteg at German Wikipedia [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
