Best interests of the child requires recognition of both intending parents´ parenthood

Last May the Swiss Supreme Court, by a tiny majority of 3:2, refused to recognize the non-genetic intending parent of a surrogate child born in the USA. Of the two parents established by the lawful judgment of the competent Californian court, the Swiss Supreme Court allows just the genetic parent to be entered into the Swiss civil registry (Urteil 5A_748/2014).At the same time the Swiss recognized the US-judgment as far as it denies parenthood of the birth mother effecting that the child in Switzerland, different then in the US, has only one parent.

As counsel of the parents, Karin Hochl,  lawyer in private practice in Winterthur, reports, the parents and the child just have filed an application to the European Court of Human Rights. The child is represented by a separate independent human rights lawyer, the Vienna based attorney Dr. Helmut Graupner, president of Rechtskomitee LAMBDA (RKL) (www.RKLambda.at) und co-coordinator of the European Commission on Sexual Orientation law (ECSOL) (www.sexualorientationlaw.eu). The applicant family argues violations of the right to respect for private and family life and of the right to non-discrimination. 

More details in the attached press release of Schaub-Hochl law firm (in German).