\t\t\t\tIf you\u2019ve lived in the Portland area for any time at all, you\u2019re likely to recognize the name Jordan Schnitzer.\u00a0 Jordan, son of Arlene and Harold Schnitzer, is one of the richest men in Portland, and one of its native sons.\u00a0 His family name is on buildings throughout the city, and his philanthropy is well known.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also a major party in one of the most interesting untested issues in family law in Oregon.\u00a0 His former partner, Cory Sause, the egg donor to his young son, Samuel, is taking him to court over parenting rights.<\/p>\n
The case started between Jordan Schnitzer and Cassondra Gibeaut.\u00a0 Gibeaut is the surrogate, who carried the boy to term.\u00a0 Gibeaut signed the court paperwork relinquishing any rights to Samuel, and the court filed a judgment that Jordan Schnitzer was the sole genetic, and exclusive legal parent to Samuel.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter, Sause filed a motion to unwind that judgment and asked the court to recognize her as a biological parent to Samuel.<\/p>\n
The case history goes something like this:\u00a0 Sause and Schnitzer were dating.\u00a0 Schnitzer tells Sause he\u2019s trying to have a boy.\u00a0 He\u2019s got two daughters already,\u00a0 from a previous marriage, but he wanted, more than anything, to have a boy.\u00a0 Sause has previously frozen her eggs and wants to let Schnitzer use them.\u00a0 They apparently agree that he will disavow any rights to any embryos that are female.\u00a0 They find a surrogate, who won\u2019t claim parentage at all.<\/p>\n
There now seems to be a disagreement between what Schnitzer and Sause agreed or didn\u2019t agree to when Sause agreed to allow Schnitzer to use her eggs to have a son. \u00a0To further complicate things, there seem to be text messages from Schnitzer to Sause where he referred to the birth of \u201ctheir child.\u201d\u00a0 But some of the text messages going the other way appear to show the opposite.\u00a0 On top of that, there are multiple agreements drafted by the parties regarding both the embroys and any children, one of which was signed, one of which was not.\u00a0 The ambiguities in the contracts are a large part of this parenting litigation.<\/p>\n
So, to recap, and please, bear with me, we have Jordan Schnitzer\u2019s sperm and Cory Sause\u2019s frozen eggs in the uterus of a surrogate.\u00a0 A baby boy is born. Schnitzer then petitioned the court that only he should be listed as a parent on the child\u2019s birth certificate. Sause then petitions the court to have her recognized as a parent.<\/p>\n
Egg Donation and Parentage\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n Oregon does not have a specific egg donation statute; rather, they have a sperm donation statute. \u00a0That statute is clear that sperm donors have \u201cno right, obligation, or interest with respect to a child born as a result of the artificial insemination.\u201d\u00a0 However, case law isn\u2019t so clear on this. \u00a0In McIntyre v. Crouch, <\/em>found that a sperm donor could raise the issue of whether or not there was an agreement between the parties that the donor would have parental rights.\u00a0 While this is an egg donor <\/em>case, that analysis may apply.\u00a0 Now, the difficult issue is to unpack what exactly the agreement was between the two parties.<\/p>\n Despite the fact that Schnitzer, who nearly limitless legal resources, he may not have completely covered his bases in this instances, and Sause may have a colorable legal argument.\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly a lesson that no matter how much you can plan, things may not go your way.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be following this case with great interest.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you\u2019ve lived in the Portland area for any time at all, you\u2019re likely to recognize the name Jordan Schnitzer.\u00a0 Jordan, son of Arlene and Harold Schnitzer, is one of the richest men in Portland, and one of its native sons.\u00a0 His family name is on buildings throughout the city, and his philanthropy is well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-custody","7":"category-surrogacy","8":"category-unmarried-parents","9":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/corey-law.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/corey-law.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/corey-law.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corey-law.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corey-law.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/corey-law.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/corey-law.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corey-law.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corey-law.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}