Our beautiful son Liam was born in 2006. I love him always and forever.

We had seven magical years as father and son before Liam’s mothers decided a father was no longer what they wanted for Liam. Instead, I became “just the donor”. 

It was a shocking and unreasonable decision, triggering years of counselling, mediation and legal action in the Federal Circuit Court and later, the Family Court of Australia.

As the costs topped $200,000 and then continued to climb, it became clear that the law, especially family law, is not a saviour, it’s more often a collection of ambiguous, contestable and often ignorable instructions as to how families ought to behave.

Which is not to dismiss the good intentions of lawmakers and the many decent people who practice. It’s more that if every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, as Tolstoy observed, then every family law battle is deeply unsatisfactory in its own weird way. Even more so if you happen to be a donor dad.