Ruling ensures no expert witnesses will appear at sperm donor case hearing
Judge concludes state of Kansas failed to meet deadline
Posted: November 3, 2014
By Tim Hrenchir
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
A judge’s ruling Monday ensured no expert witnesses will be called during a hearing this month to determine whether the genetic testing of William Marotta is in the best interest of a 5-year-old girl he allegedly fathered through a sperm donation.
During a hearing that lasted about 10 minutes, Shawnee County District Judge Mary Mattivi upheld an objection lodged by Marotta’s attorney, Benoit Swinnen.
Mattivi concluded the Kansas Department for Children and Families, which recently sought to designate and call an expert witness in the case, failed to meet a requirement that expert witness designations be turned in at least 90 days before trial unless otherwise approved by the court.
Mattivi also designated Swinnen to make the initial presentation during a “Ross hearing” scheduled Nov. 18 and 20 regarding a case the Kansas Department for Children and Families filed in October 2012. Swinnen volunteered Monday to go first at the hearing.
The Department for Families and Children is seeking to have Marotta declared the father so he can be forced to pay child support regarding the girl Jennifer Schreiner bore in 2009.
Marotta said he didn’t intend to be the child’s father and signed a contract waiving his parental rights and responsibilities while agreeing to donate sperm in a plastic cup to Schreiner and Angela Bauer, who was then her lesbian partner. Marotta contacted the women after they placed an ad seeking a sperm donor on Craigslist.
Mattivi ruled last January the contract was moot because Schreiner and Bauer didn’t follow a Kansas statute enacted in 1994, which Mattivi said requires a licensed physician to perform the artificial insemination in cases involving sperm donors. Mattivi ordered Marotta in May to undergo genetic testing to determine if he was the girl’s father.
But the Kansas Supreme Court then ruled in June that a Ross hearing must first determine whether genetic testing to determine biological parenthood was in the best interest of the child.
Swinnen said in June if the state were to call expert witnesses to testify on whether a child suffers emotionally while growing up in a homosexual family rather than in a heterosexual one, he was prepared to call an expert witness who would testify no child suffers from growing up in a homosexual family.