Nevada Supreme Court upholds joint custody of child to former lesbian couple

CARSON CITY — A Nevada Supreme Court panel has upheld the awarding of joint physical custody in a Las Vegas case involving a woman who bore a child from a fertilized egg donated by her female companion.

The unpublished order comes after the full court in 2013 ruled that Sha’Kayla St. Mary, who carried the child to term, was not just a surrogate and could make an argument for custodial rights.

St. Mary filed the legal action after Veronica Damon, the “biological parent” of the fertilized egg, separated from St. Mary less than a year after the child was born in June 2008. Damon refused to allow St. Mary to visit the child.

The full court decision in 2013 returned the case to district court for further proceedings. The district court ordered joint custody and both women appealed elements of the ruling.

In the order dated Monday, a three-justice panel of the Supreme Court agreed that substantial evidence showed that St. Mary was the child’s parent and upheld the lower court decision.

The Supreme Court noted that the two women lived together during the conception, went on a family vacation after the child was born and accepted mail as a couple and a family. St. Mary also stayed home and breast-fed the child for five months.

Damon and St. Mary were employees at the Southern Nevada Women’s Correctional Center in 2006 when they met. They used money set aside for their retirement to conceive a child through a fertility clinic using an anonymous sperm donor.

In the parenting agreement required by the clinic, Damon was identified as the “biological parent” and St. Mary as the “non-biological parent.”

The original district court decision found that St. Mary was only a surrogate and not entitled to any custodial rights but that was reversed by the unanimous Supreme Court in its 2013 decision.

Contact Sean Whaley at swhaley@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-3820. Follow @seanw801 on Twitter.