If you or your partner used assisted reproduction with donor sperm or eggs to have your child, you may be wondering where you legally stand as a parent, especially if the relationship later runs into difficulty. Spanish law is clear and protective on this point.
Spain's law on assisted human reproduction techniques, Law 14/2006 of May 26th, sets out the key rules.
What this means for you
If you gave your formal consent, in advance and in writing, to fertilization using a donor's contribution, you cannot later go back on it. Neither the wife nor the husband in the couple can contest the child's affiliation once that consent was given.
The same protection applies to an unmarried man. If he signed a document at the authorised fertility centre or service consenting to the donor fertilization before it took place, he is bound by it in the same way. The one thing this does not close off is a judicial paternity claim, which remains possible.
It is also worth knowing that if the donor's identity is ever disclosed, in the situations where that is allowed, this disclosure does not by itself change or establish legal parentage. Finding out who the donor was is a separate matter from who your child's legal parents are.
