The Surrogacy Case That Changed Everything

Nobody sets out to make legal history. Sometimes the law catches up with you in ways nobody anticipated, and suddenly your private life becomes a public spectacle.

How It Started

In 1994, my then-wife Luanne and I arranged for an embryo — created from anonymous donors — to be implanted in a surrogate mother. We weren’t the biological parents. The surrogate wasn’t the biological parent. The donors were anonymous. On paper, this child had no legal parents at all.

That was fine until I filed for divorce one month before Jaycee was born in 1995.

The Legal Void

What followed was a question no California court had ever faced: when nobody is biologically related to a child, who are the legal parents?

The lower court ruled that Luanne was not the lawful mother, and therefore I could not be the lawful father. A two-year-old child was effectively declared a legal orphan — not by tragedy, but by the absence of law.

Intent vs. Biology

The case climbed to the Court of Appeal, where the judges faced a fundamental question about what makes someone a parent. Is it DNA? Is it carrying a child to term? Or is it the deliberate choice to bring a child into existence?

The Ruling

In 1998, the California Court of Appeal ruled in In re Marriage of Buzzanca that intent determines parenthood. Because Luanne and I had initiated the surrogacy with the intention of becoming parents, we were the legal parents — regardless of biology.

The ruling set a precedent that still shapes surrogacy law across America today.

The Aftermath

I was ordered to pay child support for eighteen years for a child I never wanted and have never met. Whether that’s justice or injustice depends on your perspective. What’s undeniable is that the case forced the legal system to confront questions it had been avoiding — and the answers it produced changed family law permanently.