WANT a baby?

There's a phone app for that now for potential parents, sperm or egg donors or surrogates but it could open a door to some unexpected lifetime consequences.

The app Just-A-Baby is being promoted to give "anyone that's dreamt of being a parent the key to finding a match in a simple and easy way”.

The Australian-developed phone app provides a meeting point to find potential co-parents, sperm or egg donors, or surrogates. It was launched at Sydney's reecent mardi gras fair day.

The Just-A-Baby app designers are reported as saying the Australian-developed app is generating overseas interest now.

But people should think very carefully before embarking on making a baby via an app.

You don't know anything about the person at the other end. There are a lot of legalities to consider.

In Australia, commercial surrogacy is not legal and the laws differ in each state. In some states surrogacy is only legal between a heterosexual couple, so this may not offer a solution for same sex couples.

There are complex legal issues that can arise in terms of sperm donation and egg donation.

There are provisions in the Family Law Act around provision of genetic material. For instance, if you donate sperm, that does not make you a parent with any parental rights under the Act.

However, if a person who provides sperm is named on the birth certificate, it can lead to some unintended consequences.

I acted for a same-sex female couple who were in de facto relationship. They decided to have a child and a male friend provided sperm, which one of the women was then impregnated with.

Because this male person was a friend, they decided to put his name on the birth certificate.

Later, the relationship between the two females ended and then the relationship with the sperm donor broke down. Everyone became quite acrimonious.

One of the female parents wanted to take the child overseas but because the sperm donor was on the birth certificate listed as the father, although he had never acted in the role as a parent, under the passport legislation he was required to sign the passport application.

He used that as leverage. This mother who wished to take the child overseas to her own birth home to meet extended family had to go to the family courts to get a passport which then turned into a custody battle with the sperm donor.

There were lessons from this.

If people are using someone else's sperm or eggs to have a child, when it's anonymous there are no custody issues.

But if someone is using a known party, particularly someone they've met on the app, they should definitely be seeking legal advice, specifically who goes on the birth certificate and whether there is any intention for the donor to be part of the child's life.

Another complication is if someone wants to donate and remain anonymous but the child wants to know about the donor later down the track, what sort of confidentiality provisions have you put in place?

Ms Hetherington said the co-parenting option promoted by the app also raises a red flag.

Co-parenting implies you're raising the child together. If you're meeting via an app with the express intention of having a child together without knowing the person's background, all sorts of things can go wrong.

Having a child is a huge step for anyone and most couples make the decision after getting to know each other. If you end up with fundamentally different parenting values, you may just find yourself in the Family Law Courts down the track.

Just to complicate the issue comes news from America where a New York State Supreme Court Judge has granted a former Long Island couple and their former neighbour, with whom they had a threesome relationship, "tri-custody” of their 10-year-old son.

The married couple formed a close, intimate relationship with their downstairs female neighbour. The wife was infertile so they agreed the neighbour would become pregnant and they would raise the resulting child together.

But the two females then left to be a couple, to the exclusion of the husband. A custody case followed and a judge ordered all three share custody.

In Australia, the Family Law Act addressing who may apply for a parenting order identifies the parents, the child, the grandparents and also contains a provision for "any other person concerned with the care, welfare or development of the child”.

"So the legal potential is there for another party to seek co-parenting rights.

It worries me that a technology has been developed to match people wanting babies, but the downstream complications may not be properly considered by those desperate to have a child.

Anyone using the app should ensure their carefully considered decision involves specialist legal advice.

Jennifer Hetherington is a family law specialist with Hetherington Legal in Brisbane.