The blond toddler, his diapers peeking out from his waistline, is barking like a dog. He chases his giggling sister on all fours across hardwood floors before leaping onto her back, causing her to spill into even more peals of laughter.
It's a scene familiar to any young family immersed in the day-to-day chaos and joy of raising tiny, inseparable kids. And it's the kind of scene that Julianna and Catherine Sheridan envisioned when they asked their closest friend to be their sperm donor.
Several years ago, when the Sheridans decided they wanted to start a family, Chris Edrington kept rising to the top of their list of men who could potentially help. So one night in 2017, the St. Paul couple invited him out for Mexican food and popped the question.
Excited for the couple, Edrington said yes. But now the girl he helped conceive through artificial insemination is a kindergartner, and Edrington wants to be more than just her family friend and sperm donor. He wants the courts to recognize him as her legal dad.
A district court judge denied the Sheridans' request to dismiss his claim to paternity. Now the couple are asking the state Court of Appeals to reconsider. Ever since they were served with Edrington's lawsuit — exactly a year ago Sunday — the couple have been consumed with worry that their 5-year-old daughter would be uprooted from their family.
The case has also rattled LGBTQ+ advocates, state legislators and family law attorneys who say it could have wide-ranging repercussions not only for same-sex couples but other Minnesota families who rely on assisted reproduction.
"We have statutes that say a sperm donor is not a parent," says Erica Holzer, an attorney working for the couple on their appeal. "There just hasn't been a case like this. It's because Minnesota law protects families who use assisted reproduction. It protects kids who were conceived by assisted reproduction. And it protects same-sex couples and their families."
After spending tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, the Sheridans have agonized over a possible future in which their daughter will spend half her birthdays or Christmas celebrations apart from them. Or that she will no longer wake up each morning to play with her little brother, a 2-year-old conceived with the help of a different sperm donor.
"You still have to show up for your children and try to hide the nightmare that we've been living through," Julianna says, fighting tears. "We have been living in a state of fear that our family unit is going to get torn apart."
The couple say from that first conversation in which they approached Edrington, all three parties agreed that the Sheridans would be the child's parents. "We were very direct," Catherine says. The moms would assume all legal rights and decide how to rear their kid.
"Chris would be 'Chris' to the child," Julianna says. "Any father-daughter language, that was a hard 'no' for us."
Edrington, a straight man in his 50s, agreed to provide the sperm through artificial insemination. Down the road, if the child had questions about her genetic identity, she could find answers in Edrington. But the parties never formalized the agreement with any written contracts.
Edrington seemed like a logical person to lean on. He had officiated at the Sheridans' living-room wedding in 2017, four years after Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage. And he had been Catherine's best friend for more than a decade. They met shortly after she moved to the Twin Cities in 2009 to get clean; he runs a residential sober living program, and Catherine credits him for mentoring her on her path to recovery.
The pieces of starting a family seemed to snap into place after the Sheridans purchased a turn-of-the-century rowhouse on the West Side. They envisioned it coming alive with the squeals of kids, hopefully a boy and a girl. But they didn't have the tens of thousands of dollars it would take to receive in-vitro fertilization treatments at a facility. In-home kits, which included specimen cups and insemination syringes, were the most affordable route for Julianna to get pregnant.
Weeks after one procedure, Edrington invited them to dinner at his home. The women surprised him with a handmade card bearing a photo of a positive pregnancy test. "One made it," the card read. The three celebrated the news.
By the time Julianna delivered a baby girl in the summer of 2018, the Sheridans had been married for about a year. The birth certificate listed both moms as the parents.
Edrington baby-sat frequently, and remained close to the Sheridans. He describes in court filings tender moments when he fed the girl bottles and put her down for naps while playing guitar and singing her to sleep. He told family and friends that she was his daughter, according to his affidavit. (That revelation, among many others about how he identified as her dad, shocked the Sheridans when they pored over the court documents. They say they feel betrayed by a "secret life" they allege he carried without their knowledge.)
Julianna and Catherine, known to their children as Mama J. and Mama C., read their daughter a picture book about a two-mom family that gave birth to a donor-conceived little girl. The Sheridans' daughter knew she had a donor, but her moms were waiting until she was old enough to tell her that Edrington was hers. Every Tuesday afternoon, he helped with baby-sitting — right up until couple were served with court papers.
"We were blindsided by this lawsuit," said Julianna. Everything had been going fine, from the couple's perspective, "until he changed his mind."
Edrington declined to talk to me for this column, and his attorney did not return my calls. He said in court filings that "every social connection I have is aware that I am very proud to be the father of this child."
He's asked the courts to order genetic testing to establish his paternity as well as parenting time and joint legal and physical custody of the girl. He now believes it does not serve the child's best interest "for her not to know that I am her father."
A 2006 Minnesota law clearly bars sperm donors from claiming to be a child's legal dad. And after the state enacted marriage equality, it clarified that same-sex couples should get the same protections and parentage presumptions as straight couples.
But another statute, hailing back to the 1980s, also addresses artificial insemination — in cases involving a "licensed physician." When a judicial referee opined that Edrington's case should advance, she concluded that the Legislature intended to protect parents against claims by the donor only when the procedures are done in conjunction with a doctor.
Rep. Athena Hollins, DFL-St. Paul, is an attorney who practiced family law. Over the years, she has advised friends in same-sex relationships to leave nothing to chance when starting a family. That means having one partner adopt the child and getting everything in writing. (But many couples don't realize the discrepancies in Minnesota law because not everyone "has a lawyer friend," she points out.)
That's one reason she's sponsoring legislation that would replace what she and many others consider outdated language in the Minnesota Parentage Act. Her wide-ranging bill would further clarify that egg and sperm donors in these situations cannot claim to be the mom or dad, even if the parties perform in-home artificial insemination and don't sign official paperwork. When told about the Sheridans' case, she said these updates would protect couples in exactly this situation.
Marriage equality is now the law of the land, and yet, "the small details of our statutes haven't been updated," Hollins says.
Even if same-sex couples ultimately win in court, "that's still incredibly time-consuming and expensive for the people involved," she adds. "Nobody should have to litigate that far to have this basic recognition."
The recognition, she said, that the intended parent is the parent.
Edrington has argued in his paternity action that he already has enjoyed "parenting time" until it was cut off after he filed the lawsuit.
But who are the parents?
To me, they are the moms who taught the girl her letters and numbers, researched kindergartens, set expectations and discipline, comforted her at night, and housed her every day of her life. It is the mom who carried and delivered this baby. It is her wife, a stay-at-home mom, who has made sure all of their daughter's logistical and emotional needs were met.
"Until you have a child and you raise a child, you don't know what parenting is," Julianna says.
The couple have already spent nearly $30,000 in legal fees to keep their family intact. (I initially found them through a GoFundMe fundraiser to help pay for the case's escalating costs.)
Edrington is expected to file his legal brief in the case soon. A three-judge panel could hear the case within the next few months. Either side could contest the panel's decision by appealing to the state Supreme Court.
Holzer, one of couple's attorneys, says it's hard to fathom a scenario in which a sperm donor would be able to assert parentage after helping a straight married couple start a family through artificial insemination. The matter is deeply personal for her: Holzer and her wife are raising two kids conceived through assisted reproduction.
"What we're hoping is that the Court of Appeals will confirm that the law means what it says," she says. "If it doesn't, then every person or family in Minnesota who has used assisted reproduction to conceive children should talk to a lawyer."
Here's what I see: A sperm donor, even one who loves and cares for a child he helped conceive, is not a father.
Edrington must have felt a swirl of emotions when he started to fall for the whip-smart little girl who looked like him. Who reciprocated his smiles. Who brought joy to his life on brunch dates and trips to the playground. Still, that's not parenting.
Did he have a change of heart about what he agreed to? It's understandable if he did. But acting on it isn't.
A 5-year-old girl is in a stable home with two loving moms and her rambunctious brother. She knows no other world.
Her Mama J. puts it like this: "There was nothing wrong with our family the way it was."
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