David Tutera Divorce

[NHdisneylover]

But they ARE blood siblings. Biologically they have different fathers but the same mother.

I don't think they are. This quote from the article "two embryos were fertilized and implanted into the same surrogate, resulting in one child, daughter Cielo, being biologically David’s while son Cedric is biologically Ryan’s" indicates that Cedric came from one of her eggs but that Cielo did not.

I have to wonder WHY do that; why make one child related to only one parent and the other related to only the other If they thought the relatonship would work, it seems like a very odd way to go about it.

And I fully agree it is REALLY odd and downright wrong to intentionally have children as a way of trying to save a relationship.

I also agree with a PP that since the children are infants with little connection to one anotehr yet, splitting them up is not likely to be a big deal. I find the htoguht of only wanting your biological child distasteful--but I doubt the split would harm the kids much if at all.

 

[jrmasm]

I don't think they are. This quote from the article "two embryos were fertilized and implanted into the same surrogate, resulting in one child, daughter Cielo, being biologically David’s while son Cedric is biologically Ryan’s" indicates that Cedric came from one of her eggs but that Cielo did not.

I have to wonder WHY do that; why make one child related to only one parent and the other related to only the other If they thought the relatonship would work, it seems like a very odd way to go about it.

And I fully agree it is REALLY odd and downright wrong to intentionally have children as a way of trying to save a relationship.

I also agree with a PP that since the children are infants with little connection to one anotehr yet, splitting them up is not likely to be a big deal. I find the htoguht of only wanting your biological child distasteful--but I doubt the split would harm the kids much if at all.

Tmz says one woman donated both eggs. A different woman carried the pregnancy. If that is true, they are half siblings.

My guess would be the eggs were fertilized separately so each man had has own child. Isn't that one reason people use surrogates? To create a genetic link?

In my opinion, they're not puppies. I think they should be together.

 

[lizabu]

Tmz says one woman donated both eggs. A different woman carried the pregnancy. If that is true, they are half siblings.

My guess would be the eggs were fertilized separately so each man had has own child. Isn't that one reason people use surrogates? To create a genetic link?

In my opinion, they're not puppies. I think they should be together.

On the view he said they were half siblings. I'm not sure what the answer is here. He said they initiated the divorce 3 years ago but still went through the surrogacy knowing they were going to divorce. It's only fair for those children to have a relationship. On TMZ someone said split custody is more common. Maybe a better solution is having homes close together and each parent has the children together 50% of the time.

 

[Handbag Lady]

Am I the only one who thought this thread was an announcement of a spin-off TV show?

Could you imagine the parties?

 

[NHdisneylover]

Tmz says one woman donated both eggs. A different woman carried the pregnancy. If that is true, they are half siblings.

My guess would be the eggs were fertilized separately so each man had has own child. Isn't that one reason people use surrogates? To create a genetic link?

In my opinion, they're not puppies. I think they should be together.

On the view he said they were half siblings. I'm not sure what the answer is here. He said they initiated the divorce 3 years ago but still went through the surrogacy knowing they were going to divorce. It's only fair for those children to have a relationship. On TMZ someone said split custody is more common. Maybe a better solution is having homes close together and each parent has the children together 50% of the time.

My mistake! I have no idea who this person is, and reading the article did not realize it was two men (I have known a couple of women named Ryan). I shouldn't have assumed like that.

So they were both sperm donors--that makes sense then as to why each is biologically related to only one child and then, yeah, we do not have enough information to know if the children have any biological relationship or not (maybe the newspapers don't either and that is why they are not reporting it ).

 

[EMom]

As the mother of a child who was adopted, I cannot turning my back on a child due to lack of DNA, let alone splitting up twins. My DD is 100% mine. If DH and I had used a surrogate and his sperm, that child would have been 100% mine (and his) as well. In the event of a divorce, no way would I have handed over an infant/child because it had his DNA and not mine.

Maybe these twins are better off with a set of parents smart enough to know having a baby won't save a bad marriage, that the children are at least half siblings and may very well resent being separated, and who .....at a minimum.....aren't ready to separate twins like a set of china.

I am disgusted by both parents. We have contact with DD's full sibling, who was adopted by different parents. She has mentioned many times that she wishes they could have been raised together. I told her that would have been ideal, but in our case, not possible. She is aware she is missing out on living with a sibling. I cannot imagine them ever having been in the same home, and then separated on purpose.

 

[pryncess527]

I wonder how much of the special twin bond comes from the gestational period? I mean I suppose there's really no way to know that but I'm kind of curious. I read stories of twins who were separated at birth that say it always felt like something was missing, of course those are typically genetic twins but that doesn't mean the DNA is what caused that connection, or not DNA alone

 

[msjprincess]

Which has nothing to do with anything then. The question was...are they or are they not biologically related. If the eggs are from the same woman, then it really doesn't matter who carried them...they would still be biologically related.

Where the info is coming from about how many women were involved in the process, I'm just not seeing that in the OP. It seems to me that the surrogate used her eggs, which were fertilized by David and his spouse.

I don't think the situation is as dire or awful as everyone seems to think. There are many children out in the world these days who are born as the result of surrogates and sperm donors, who don't have relationships.

On the View this morning he said that they weren't her eggs. He said that they implanted the embryos. He didn't say who donated the eggs.

 

[Conservative Hippie]

I heard back in the spring that David wanted full custody of both, so maybe this is an attempt to compromise?

Sent from me.

 

[IntoTheLight]

Egg donor donates eggs.

Eggs are spilt into 2 portions.

Half fertilized with Ryan's Sperm, half with Davids.

Gestational Surrogate (a 2nd woman) has 1 embryo from each group transferred into her uterus.

They know therefore when twins are shown during the pregnancy, that one is genetically each fathers because they are different genders. If only one embryo spilt into identicals, they would be the same gender. Had they done genetic testing on the embryos they would know prenatally which gender was which father's biological child, if not they would know after birth via DNA test.

The children are half siblings, splitting them up and pretending this never happened would be the same as if a woman had a second child with a new husband and they divorced and he took the new baby and she took her first child. It will never negate that they had the same mother.

I won't comment on what the fertility clinic, surrogacy agency or lawyers were thinking letting this move forward with people in a divorce... I guess money talks.

 

[emilily88]

Wow - how sad. I hope they can work things out with the least amount of hardship on the children.

 

[lizabu]

Egg donor donates eggs.

Eggs are spilt into 2 portions.

Half fertilized with Ryan's Sperm, half with Davids.

Gestational Surrogate (a 2nd woman) has 1 embryo from each group transferred into her uterus.

They know therefore when twins are shown during the pregnancy, that one is genetically each fathers because they are different genders. If only one embryo spilt into identicals, they would be the same gender. Had they done genetic testing on the embryos they would know prenatally which gender was which father's biological child, if not they would know after birth via DNA test.

The children are half siblings, splitting them up and pretending this never happened would be the same as if a woman had a second child with a new husband and they divorced and he took the new baby and she took her first child. It will never negate that they had the same mother.

I won't comment on what the fertility clinic, surrogacy agency or lawyers were thinking letting this move forward with people in a divorce... I guess money talks.

This was my understanding as well. I know there are cases when a woman donates eggs to multiple people and in that case they have half siblings out there they never know but I think this is different. In those other cases records are sealed for privacy. In this case they have the opportunity to give each child a sibling because they are aware. I can't help but think if the daughter is raised in a more affluent way than the son due to David's celebrity status there is going to be some resentment.

 

[IntoTheLight]

This was my understanding as well. I know there are cases when a woman donates eggs to multiple people and in that case they have half siblings out there they never know but I think this is different. In those other cases records are sealed for privacy. In this case they have the opportunity to give each child a sibling because they are aware. I can't help but think if the daughter is raised in a more affluent way than the son due to David's celebrity status there is going to be some resentment.

The majority of egg donations are anonymous, the same with sperm donation. These kids however were created together, for the same household, intended to be siblings. If we start ignoring the "intent" of 3rd party reproduction, the whole thing really falls apart.

 

[Scornelius]

This makes me very sad. I love David and My Fair Wedding, but I'm disappointed in this decision (because it's totally my business to be disappointed by a random celebrity's life choices. ).

Now that I'm a mother and have regular interaction with other moms, I'm shocked to learn how many babies are conceived to save relationships. In other situations, the children were planned before things started heading south and people think that stopping the TTC process is showing a lack of faith in your marriage. It's so sad, and I really hope this particular family finds a healthy equilibrium soon. Children are pretty good at thinking whatever they're raised with is "normal", so as long as there is peace and love in whatever scenario the dads choose, I have hope the kids wont suffer too much. Bless their little hearts.

 

[wenrob]

I wonder how much of the special twin bond comes from the gestational period? I mean I suppose there's really no way to know that but I'm kind of curious. I read stories of twins who were separated at birth that say it always felt like something was missing, of course those are typically genetic twins but that doesn't mean the DNA is what caused that connection, or not DNA alone

As a mother of fraternal boy/girl twins I can't say for sure but I can tell you this; when my babies we in the NICU, my DD would cry and cry until they put her in the same incubator as her brother. When her brother came home ten days before her, he did nothing but cry until she came home. They are fully biologically related but I've always felt it was all the time the spent sitting on top of one another.

I don't have any idea who this guy is but I am appalled at the idea of splitting these babies up and even more so at the idea that they "each take their own." As mentioned up thread, they are not puppies. I think they would absolutely feel that loss and never forget it.

 

[wenrob]

I just went and found an article. Something that keeps getting mentioned in this thread is that they've been split for three years. They did not split until the beginning of this year. The surrogate process took three years. So it seems they tried to "save things" before the split. Still not a good idea but they didn't randomly decide to have kids three years after they split like it reads in some previous posts. The babies are now 3000 miles apart.

 

[lizabu]

I just went and found an article. Something that keeps getting mentioned in this thread is that they've been split for three years. They did not split until the beginning of this year. The surrogate process took three years. So it seems they tried to "save things" before the split. Still not a good idea but they didn't randomly decide to have kids three years after they split like it reads in some previous posts. The babies are now 3000 miles apart.

I know I referred to what David said today on The View. He specifically said he and his partner started the process of divorcing 3 years ago. He didn't get into details about what his relationship with his partner has been during these three years or when the surrogacy process began.

 

[figment52]

I don't think they are. This quote from the article "two embryos were fertilized and implanted into the same surrogate, resulting in one child, daughter Cielo, being biologically Davids while son Cedric is biologically Ryans" indicates that Cedric came from one of her eggs but that Cielo did not.

I have to wonder WHY do that; why make one child related to only one parent and the other related to only the other If they thought the relatonship would work, it seems like a very odd way to go about it.

And I fully agree it is REALLY odd and downright wrong to intentionally have children as a way of trying to save a relationship.

I also agree with a PP that since the children are infants with little connection to one anotehr yet, splitting them up is not likely to be a big deal. I find the htoguht of only wanting your biological child distasteful--but I doubt the split would harm the kids much if at all.

once the kids learn to google they will know the entire story

 

[snykymom]

I guess the new term for half siblings is not fully biologically related.

This puts a whole new spin on same sex surrogacy - what if one of the partners DNA did not fertilize either of the eggs, would he have then been off the hook for custody & support or vice versa, could it be used against him to take the child away?

I know people who did this, they combined sperm to fertilize the embryos, they "didn't want to know" who the "real father" was.......well that is until their relationship went sour and they were the parents of triplets, one wanted custody and support from the other who claimed they "might not be mine" since they mixed the sperm, DNA will have to be the judge.

Some of it depends on the laws in the various states (which may not have caught up with legalized gay marriage). In many states, it is an unrebuttable presumption that the child born to a married woman is her husband's. That means that even if DNA shows that another man fathered the child, the biological father has no legal rights or responsibilities, and the husband can't get out of child support. (Of course, those laws were passed well before anyone even knew what DNA was, never mind how to test for it.)

It may be that they are both the legal parents of both children. But it's hard to say.

I know that there are at least 25 law students writing law review articles on this right now! (I wanted to write an article for my law review analyzing the situation of one egg donor, one sperm donor, a different gestational surrogate, and the two parents who started the process. My editor told me to forget it - it was too far fetched! )

 

[disykat]

I'm confused, if both "parents" agree how custody should be handled, why the court battle? Is it because the court thinks they should be together?

One way or the other, I hope both babies end up in good homes and are able to have a close relationship with one another. It sadly seems like they are part of a pretty cold hearted baby making deal.