Husband-mothers and wife-fathers

The mindbending consequences of legal gender recognition

A reader drew my attention to this interesting judgment, which was handed down before Christmas. It concerns a trans-identifying woman with a gender-recognition certificate (FZ), who is married to a woman (MZ) who has had two children with donor sperm since the couple got together. The first child was born before they married and the second after. The couple regard FZ as the children’s father and argued that she should be registered as such on the second child’s birth certificate.

I’m not going to go through the judgment offering legal commentary — I’m not qualified. What interests me is the way the case brings two sociolegal fictions, one time-honoured and the other recent, into a fascinating collision.