Gets Clue, Divorce

UK Wife Finds Out Her Husband
Is Woman After 17 Years

The couple had two children - a boy aged 9 and a girl of 4, - who were born after the woman underwent artificial insemination from a donor. The wife said her husband had told her he had had a vasectomy.

Eventually she began divorce proceedings after an argument in which she accused him of not being a real man. She hired a private detective to find out her husband's true sexuality by producing his birth certificate.

The husband took his case to the appeal court after a High Court judge ruled that he had married by committing perjury and that, consequently, he was not entitled to a division of the marriage wealth or automatic access to the children.

After the hearing, Madeleine Rees, his solicitor, said that the case raised profound issues about the status of transsexuals in British society. She said that if her client won his case, it would be a step in the right direction for the "true identity of transexuals of both sexes."

Neither of the couple can be named in order to protect their children. The husband, called "J" in court, lives in the Birmingham area and his former wife, now 49, lives with the children in West Sussex.

Ben Emerson, for the husband, said his client had "an unshakable conviction that at his core he is a man, although he is trapped in a woman's body". Mr Emerson said it was never discussed before or during the marriage "what the nature of this man's birth position was".

He said there had been ample chance during sexual intercourse for the woman to realise she was in "a relationship with someone who was not a full-blooded man".

The man had an operation to remove his breasts and had undergone hormonal treatment before he met the woman. During intercourse he used an artificial sex aid. He had never told her his original gender and now accepted that he should have done so.

The three appeal court judges, Lord Justice Neill, Lord Justice Ward and Lord Justice Potter, were asked if the man could have been said to have committed a perjury when he declared himself a bachelor on the marriage certificate.

Lord Justice Ward, announcing that the judgment would be reserved, said: "We are aware of the growing body of medical and international opinion that this court will ignore at its peril."