MIAMI — A Miami-Dade County Circuit Court judge has approved a private adoption that allows three individuals—a gay single man and a lesbian couple—to be listed conjointly as parents on their daughter’s birth certificate.

Cher Filippazzo and Maria Italiano, who wed in Connecticut, where same-sex marriage is legal, are a longtime committed couple who attempted unsuccessfully to become pregnant through the services of a fertility clinic.

They approached a friend, Massimiliano Gerina, a single gay man and native of Cagliari, Italy who lives in the North Dade community of Bay Harbor Islands, about fathering their child, a daughter named Emma who was born on March 10, 2011 and is now 23 months old.

Based on a verbal agreement, Gerina provided the women with his sperm, and Italiano conceived a child. Under Florida law, sperm donors possess no legal rights in cases involving artificial insemination.

During Italiano’s third trimester, the women contacted Gerina, requesting him to sign an agreement under which he would relinquish any attempts to claims parental rights.

Gerina hired an attorney and presented Italiano and Filippazzo with papers that contested their claims.

For almost two years, the three “parents” fought in court, and a trial was set for the end of January, but a few days before that date, the parties and their lawyers settled the case out of court.

Under the terms of the settlement approved by Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Antonio Marin, Italiano, the birth mother, receives sole parental responsibility for Emma, while Filippazzo legally adopts the child. In addition, the state recognizes Gerina as Emma’s father, and he was granted visitation time with her, at the discretion of the mothers, who will be financially responsible for the child.

In spite of the unusual circumstances of Emma’s onception, birth, and post-natal custody battle, experts say that the case is simply a second-parent adoption, and that there aren’t really three equal parents raising the baby.

“Florida law is pretty clear about this,” noted Josh Bloom, Esq., with the Fort Lauderdale-based law firm of Lubell and Rosen, P.A. “This is an adoption by the two mothers, with the ‘father’ being granted certain conditional rights.”