These moms’ sperm donor sued them to get parental rights. They just won a court victory.

Julianna and Catherine Sheridan of St. Paul, Minnesota, have been locked in a legal battle for almost a year and a half to keep custody of their daughter, who was conceived with the help of a sperm donor and an at-home IVF test.

Chris Edrington, their former friend, agreed over dinner to donate his sperm so that the Sheridans could start a family. Edrington could be in their daughter’s life, and she would be told about their genetic connection when she was old enough, but they did not want to co-parent with Edrington, which he agreed to… until he filed a paternity case without telling the couple, demanding parenting time and asking the courts to declare him the girl’s legal father, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports.

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The case was permitted to go forward by a district court judicial referee despite a Minnesota law that bars sperm or egg donors from claiming parentage. However, a three-judge panel reversed and sent back the lower court’s decision with instructions to dismiss the case on Monday.

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“I feel like we can breathe for the first time in a year and a half,” said Julianna Sheridan to a reporter from Minnesota Star Tribune. “This weight off our shoulders is unbelievable.”

For four years, things went smoothly, with Edington even babysitting the girl days before filing a lawsuit. Edrington said that he had a standing for paternity because he had welcomed the Sheridans’ daughter into his life and had referred to her as his daughter.

“She is an endearing, alluring, and beautiful kid, and she looks just like me, and I fell in love with her,” he said.

The child, Edrington said, would constantly ask him if he was her father. He said that he filed the lawsuit because I felt “that I needed to stop lying” to her.

He also said that he felt like Julianna was pulling away, and he was worried the couple may relocate to another state. He did not want to participate in a legal process known as second-parent adoption — making sure Catherine was legally recognized as her daughter’s parent.

The Star Tribune article noted Edrington “seemed to not fully appreciate how a married couple would be devastated by the prospect of redefining their family and being ordered by a court to share custody of their child.”

“[The statute] acts as a shield for married couples who conceive through assisted reproduction, under the supervision of a licensed physician, from facing parentage claims from third-party donors,” the court wrote in their decision. “But it does not act as a sword for donors to assert parentage based on positive genetic test results against married couples who used at-home assisted reproduction procedures.”

Erica Holzer, the couple’s lawyer, said that the decision was a victory for any families that use assisted reproduction.

“The court clarified that families like Julianna and Catherine’s deserve protection from these types of claims, and that if a sperm donor down the road changes his mind and files for paternity, his claim will be dismissed at the outset,” Holzer said. “This case has established that sperm and egg donors do not have standing to be parents.”

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