LAKEWAY, Texas — A Lakeway mother won a legal battle Friday stopping her estranged husband from legally becoming the father of her 4-year-old son who was conceived two years after the couple had legally separated.
On Jan. 17, Clay Saunders abandoned his paternity claims and any future claims to future visitation and access to Cheri Bergeron's son, according to Jason Meeker, a spokesperson for Bergeron.
Meeker told KVUE that, on the same day, a Travis County judge ordered that Saunders be adjudicated with "non-parentage" in relation to Bergeron's son, who would be removed from the scope of the couples upcoming divorce proceeding.
After the couple separated in 2013, Bergeron conceived the child in question through an anonymous in vitro fertilization (IVF) donor in late 2014 and gave birth to him in May 2015.
According to Meeker, Saunders took formal steps to make sure he would not be the child's "presumed father," but changed his mind in July 2019 after he filed a lawsuit in an attempt to become the child's legal father.
In December 2019, a Travis County judge ordered Saunders to take a DNA test in order to determine paternity, which came back as Saunders having a 0% probability of being the child's parent.
Despite winning her case in court, Bergeron is still fighting to change the laws surrounding presumed paternity.
“Clay Saunders came before the court as my son’s presumed father, but that presumption was completely false," said Bergeron. "The DNA test results prove what we all already knew, and a judge has made it official so my family can finally go on with our lives. Now, Texas law needs to catch up with science. I will work with our Texas representatives to protect women’s rights and make sure no one else has to go through this kind of ordeal. And I will not stop fighting until our laws are changed to protect a woman’s right to create the family of her dreams.”
Meeker has set up a change.org petition on Bergeron's behalf in an attempt to motivate Texas lawmakers to update these laws.
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