A transgender man files a lawsuit seeking recognition as the father of a child born through egg donation before gender change.

A transgender man who was identified as female at birth donated his eggs collected before his gender change to his female partner, and a child was born. Because the child was born before the two were married, a legal parent-child relationship between the man and the child was not recognized. In response, the child filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo Family Court on the 18th, asking for the mother to be the legal representative and the man to be recognized as the legal ``father.''

The focus is on whether a man who has a genetic connection to a child through an egg and who changes his legal gender after giving birth should be recognized as the legal ``father.'' According to the plaintiff's attorney, this appears to be the first lawsuit of this kind.

According to the complaint, her husband, a man in his 40s, collected her eggs in 2023, when she was legally a woman. His female partner became pregnant after receiving donor sperm and gave birth in November 2024.

The following month, his legal gender change was recognized, and the two married in February 2015. She submitted a notification of recognition of the child to a ward office in Tokyo, requesting that the man be recognized as the ``father,'' but the request was rejected, so she filed a lawsuit seeking recognition.

Generally, the relationship between mother and child is established when the mother gives birth, and if the mother is married, there is a rule that the mother's husband is presumed to be the child's father. In this case, however, because the child's birth occurred before the gender change and marriage, legal paternity was not recognized, even though there was a genetic link between the man and the child.

Lawyer Shun Nakaoka, representing the plaintiffs, says, ``We're not seeking special rights. We want to realize the right to start a family as a matter of course, even for sexual minorities.''

A similar precedent is the Supreme Court's decision in 2014. The ruling recognized the woman as the ``father'' of a child born to a transgender woman who changed her legal gender from male by donating her own frozen sperm to her female partner.