Tennessee Supreme Court Rules Woman Who Gave Birth to Triplets Using Another's Eggs Can Maintain Custody of Children

Main Category: Fertility
Article Date: 13 Oct 2005 - 0:00 PDT

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The Tennessee Supreme Court on Thursday voted 4-1 to uphold a ruling that a woman who gave birth to triplets after undergoing in vitro fertilization using the eggs of another woman should be considered the children's legal mother, the Tennessean reports (Demsky, Tennessean, 10/7). The woman, Cindy Culpepper, and her then partner, Charles Galiwango, in 1999 decided they wanted to have children. However, Culpepper, who was 45 years old at the time, could no longer produce viable eggs, and the couple decided she would undergo IVF using eggs obtained from an anonymous donor and fertilized using Galiwango's sperm. Culpepper gave birth to triplets in 2001, and the couple ended their relationship a few months later. Culpepper subsequently filed for custody of the children and requested child support payments from Galiwango, but he refused, saying that she should not have custody because she is not biologically related to them. The Williamson County Juvenile Court ruled that Culpepper should be considered the triplets' mother and should be awarded primary custody of the children. A three-judge panel of the Tennessee Court of Appeals in June 2004 upheld the ruling (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 6/29/04). Galiwango's attorney, Larry Hayes, on Thursday said he was unsure whether his client would appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

State Supreme Court Ruling
"The woman is the children's legal mother with all the rights and responsibilities of parenthood," Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Drowota -- who retired after the case was heard earlier this year -- wrote in the majority opinion, adding, "Recent developments in reproductive technology have caused a tectonic shift in the realities which underlie our legal conceptions of parenthood." Justice Adolpho Birch in a dissenting opinion wrote that the majority opinion "reached beyond existing law to produce a palatable result," adding, "Unless our Legislature acts, I fear that this narrowly tailored solution designed for this specific case will be used as precedent for other cases involving reproductive technology" (Tennessean, 10/7). Some legal scholars said the ruling could be applied to later cases involving "nontraditional" parental rights disputes, the AP/ABC News reports. Vanderbilt University Law School professor Susan Brooks said, "In most states, the courts have not looked beyond the biological connections, marriage or adoption in determining the definition of a parent," adding, "People who would support greater rights for nontraditional parents -- like gay couples -- would be encouraged by an opinion that would define parent more broadly than simply by marriage, genetics or adoption" (French, AP/ABC News, 10/7).

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