Hearing ordered before sperm donor faces genetic testing
Kansas Supreme Court stalls Shawnee County ruling ordering testing
Posted: June 17, 2014
By The Capital-Journal
The Kansas Supreme Court has ordered a Shawnee County District Court to conduct a hearing to determine whether genetic testing of William Marotta is in the best interest of the child he allegedly fathered through a sperm donation.
The court, in a split decision released this past Friday, negated a May 2014 ruling by Shawnee County District Court Judge Mary Mattivi ordering Marotta to undergo genetic testing to determine if he is, in fact, the father of the now 4-year-old child.
At stake in the case is whether Marotta should pay child support to the Kansas Department of Children and Families as the biological father of a child for whom he claims no parental rights.
Mattivi ruled in January 2014 that Marotta was legally the father of a child born in 2009 to Jennifer Schreiner, who was artificially inseminated without a doctor’s care by a sperm donation solicited through a Craigslist ad. Marotta claimed he had signed a contract forfeiting all rights to fatherhood, but the state DCF claimed he was still liable for child support — a position supported by Mattivi’s ruling.
Mattivi ruled the contract between Marotta, Schreiner and her female partner was moot because the women didn’t follow a 1994 Kansas statute that Mattivi said required a licensed physician to perform the artificial insemination in cases involving sperm donors.
The state then moved to require genetic testing to determine Marotta’s paternity, and he sued to block it. Mattivi ordered the testing to take place without first conducting a “Ross hearing” — a hearing that determines whether genetic testing to determine biological parenthood is in the best interests of the child.
In a majority order written by Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss, the high court ruled that Kansas law dictates that the best interests of a child must prevail in determining parental rights and obligations. It noted its ruling in the Ross case that said a district court must consider the best interests of a child before ordering a blood test to determine whether a presumed parent is a biological parent.
“Read in gender-neutral language,” Nuss wrote, “Ross held that the shifting of parental roles from a presumed parent to a biological parent could be detrimental to the emotional and physical well-being of any child, thus necessitating a hearing to determine if the shifting is in the best interests of the child.”
Justices Dan Biles and Nancy Moritz dissented in the order.