Where is the issue? Two parents are raising a child, they split up and the court has granted them both access to the child.

It is irrelevant that they both happen to be females, if you ask me.

A LESBIAN mother was stopped from moving her daughter interstate after a court ruled her ex-partner had the same rights as other parents, despite no biological link.

The 41-year-old mother had asked the Family Court to grant her sole parental responsibility for the four-year-old girl, conceived via an anonymous sperm donor, noting that her ex-partner was not listed as a parent on the child's birth certificate.

But Family Court Justice Paul Cronin disagreed ruling that the women "had equal shared responsibility" for the child.

In deciding whether to let the mother relocate the child from Queensland to NSW, Justice Cronin also took into account the girl's relationship as a sister to the second woman's eight-year-old daughter.

It was decided the move would not be in the girl's best interests until she was old enough to understand and maintain a long-distance relationship with her non-biological mother and sister.

The complex case highlighted the difficulties in dealing with separation of homosexual couples who have one or more children with differing biological relationships.
"Much of the judicial history about "relocation" cases has focussed on heterosexual parents where biological connection was clear," Justice Cronin said in his judgement.

"This case highlights the reality rather than the abstract of a breakdown of a same-sex relationship into which had been born children by artificial conception procedures to two different mothers."

The court heard the mother and her 39-year-old former partner, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were in a committed relationship from January 2002 until early 2008 and lived together in Queensland.

During that time the 39-year-old gave birth to a daughter, now aged 8, via IVF using a friend's sperm.

Four years later, the 41-year-old woman gave birth to the four-year-old girl, conceived via an anonymous sperm donor.

In ruling the women had shared responsibility for both children, Justice Cronin referred to a November 2008 amendment to the Family Law Act which states that if a woman becomes pregnant through artificial insemination and she has a spouse or defacto partner at the time of conception, then they are legally considered to be the second parent of the child regardless of biology.

The law is applicable to both heterosexual and lesbian relationships is only considered not relevant if the woman's partner actively objected to his or her partner becoming pregnant.

While they lived together as a family, the women both acted as parents to the girls with the children calling one mummy and the other mumma, the court heard.

"There is no doubt that to the extent that they can understand the concept, the children not only love each other but also consider themselves to be sisters," Justice Cronin said.

"Each child shows love and affection towards their non-biological mother."

When the couple separated in 2008 each woman took custody of her own biological child, but the girls continued seeing the other parent on alternate weekends and during school holidays.

Almost immediately after the separation, the 41-year-old woman told her former partner of her plan to move with the four-year-old girl to NSW for work and family reasons.

But, following Justice Cronin's decision, she will be unable to do that until next year.

Justice Cronin ruled that that is when girl, who will then be five-and-a-half, will be old enough to understand her parents separation and be capable of maintaining a relationship with her non-biological mother and sister who she will speak to weekly and visit several times a year.

University of Sydney Law Professor Patrick Parkinson said the case was an example of "biology being irrelevant" when it comes to Family Law.

"Emotional reality is very different to the legal situation," he said.

"Where there isn't a biological connection (between the child and the other parent) it's very easy to say this is my child, not ours.

"There are no easy answers to these issues."

Professor Parkinson said there were more cases of homosexual couples with children separating coming before the court system.

"But overall there are still only a small number of children living in families with same sex parents," he said.