No verdict in baby Donna case

1 August 2007

UTRECHT – The court in Utrecht failed to make a decision on Wednesday regarding the custody of baby Donna. The court said that the “legal” parents of baby Donna should also be given the opportunity to voice their view on the requests for custody by the baby’s biological father Bart Philtjens.

Bart Philtjens and his partner want the Dutch foster parents with whom the child has been living for 2 years to be divested of custody. The biological father has applied for custody himself.

The court was expected to decide on the case on Wednesday, but it only reached an interim settlement.

The court decided that the Belgian surrogate mother must also be heard since she and her partner are legally the child’s parents and must be heard “as interested parties in the case” according to the court.

The court is therefore postponing the case until 20 September to give the parents the opportunity to attend the hearing.

The case has been dragging on for several years. In 2004 Bart Philtjens gave his sperm to be implanted in a surrogate mother since he and his wife were unable to conceive. During the pregnancy the surrogate mother reportedly told Philtjens that she had had a miscarriage. In actuality she went on to give birth to the child and sell it to a Dutch couple she found over the internet. When confronted later she claimed that she had not become pregnant from the artificial insemination process but that the baby that she gave birth to was her partner’s.

Baby Donna was born in February 2005. After a legal tug-of-war between the Belgian biological father and the Dutch couple that had paid for Donna, the court decided in 2005 that a family relationship had developed between the Dutch foster parents and the child and awarded them custody. Earlier this year Philtjens started proceedings to gain custody after a DNA test proved that he was in fact the child’s biological father.

Subject: Belgian news, Dutch news