A person with gender identity disorder who married while still a man told the High Court yesterday her estranged wife never accepted she was a woman.
Dr Lydia Annice Foy (54), a dentist from Athy, Co Kildare, formerly Mr Donal Mark Foy, told Mr Justice McKechnie that Mrs Ann Foy had never accepted the witness's status as a person with a gender identity disorder.
Dr Foy said she could understand why her wife might think this way. When she had told Mrs Foy of her intention to take hormones, Mrs Foy had replied: "Don't be daft."
Dr Foy is seeking an order to compel the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages to change the gender status on her birth certificate from male to female and to alter her name to Lydia Annice Foy.
As Mr Donal Mark Foy, she married Ann in 1977 and they had two daughters. They were delighted and the two girls were wonderful.
The court has heard the marriage ended in the early 1990s. Dr Foy had sex-change surgery in 1992 and changed her name from Donal Mark to Lydia Annice in 1993. She carries a passport and driving licence in the name of Lydia Annice.
Mr Seamus O'Cleary, Assistant Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, said yesterday that a birth certificate records the gender of a baby on the day birth occurs.
If Dr Foy was successful in her application, then, subject to legal advice, one conclusion based on the evidence tendered in court was that the marriage of Dr Foy was void, he said.
A birth certificate was not an identity document and was originally issued to give proof of age, he told Mr Bill Shipsey SC, for Dr Foy.
Asked how his office dealt with children of an inter-sex condition, Mr O'Cleary said this condition was very rare. If the sex of a baby was not known at birth, he thought the procedure would be not to complete the entry in the gender column so that an entry could be made at a later date.
In Ireland, the sex of a child was determined by examination of its external genitalia. No chromosome or other tests were conducted.
The hearing continues today.