Toulouse: the Court of Appeal recognizes the right for a transgender woman to be designated as the mother of her daughter
The epilogue of a proven legal battle. Claire, a transgender woman, has been demanding for years the right to be considered the mother of her little girl, now 8 years old. The Toulouse Court of Appeal has just ruled in his favor this Wednesday, the court said in a press release.
Concretely, Claire, 52, can now appear as a mother on her daughter’s birth certificate, a first in France. “The Toulouse Court of Appeal authorizes the mention on the birth certificate of the child, of the husband who has become a woman as a mother”, considering “that two maternal filiations which can in this case be described”, indicates the press release. “It’s a total victory in this battle. It is not the only child concerned, it is a decision which opens a new horizon, which will relax many parents and future parents, ”his lawyer Clelia Richard told AFP.
Until now, only the company of Claire, who had given birth to the little girl, was mentioned on her birth certificate. A woman born in a man’s body, this fifties, already having two children, now had no connection with her last biological daughter. Because when she was born in 2014, Claire, although recognized as a woman on her identity papers, had not yet been realized. Civil status then refused to register it on the birth certificate.
An “undeniable legal vacuum”
There followed a long legal process to try to have his right recognized. “My client wants us to take into account the reality of the civil status of each of the parents, she is a woman for the civil status, so the State and the Republic must recognize her as a mother”, had already defended one of his lawyers, Maître Mathieu Stoclet, with Le Parisien in 2020.
In recent years, Claire’s journey has been punctuated by hopes and brutal disappointments. In 2018, the Montpellier Court of Appeal, which she had requested, had decided in an unprecedented way for a compromise which filed with the fifty-year-old: to make the mention of “biological parent” exist in the civil status. A judgment that the Court of Cassation had decided to overturn in 2020, considering that the instance “could not create a new category in civil status”.
If the bioethics law entered into force on August 4 has advanced the rights of female couples in terms of filiation, the case of Claire remained in a blind spot. Because an “undeniable legal vacuum” persists with regard to transgender people whose children were born after the transition, still judges the Court of Appeal of Toulouse. So far, two solutions were available to parents in such a situation: either keep the status of father, or adopt his own child as a second mother, which Claire has always refused to do.
The Court’s decision is therefore a first in France. “The simplicity of the situation finally finds resonance in the law. It is the parentage that should have been there from the start (…) This is exactly what we asked the Toulouse Court of Appeal, ”concluded Me Richard.