Jackson's Youngest Was Born in San Diego
Michael Jackson died last week at 50
By RORY DEVINE
Updated 12:58 PM EST, Wed, Jul 8, 2009
It turns out Michael Jackson's family has an intimate connection to San Diego County.
Jackson's youngest child, Prince Michael Jackson II, was born at Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa.
The hospital is not commenting, citing confidentiality, but the boy's birth certificate is recorded at the San Diego County's Assessor/Recorder's office. According to that document, the 7-year-old was born Feb. 21, 2002, and his father is listed as Michael Joseph Jackson, born in Indiana on Aug. 29, 1958.
The name of the mother was left blank on the certificate, with other information redacted.
"It's considered a private matter to the intended parents," said Richard Vaughn, a surrogacy attorney with the National Fertility Law Center.
Vaughn said that sealing information is common in surrogacy and even for adoption.
No one knows if the surrogate mother lived in the area of Grossmont Hospital, but Vaughn said that surrogates typically give birth in cities where they live and, often, it is not about the $17,000 to $22,000 they might be paid.
"The money is part of it, but they have a need to contribute to help people in need," Vaughn said.
Gestational surrogacies, where the woman carries the child but is not the donor, are more common than surrogacies -- in which the woman is both the carrier and the donor -- because they are less emotionally risky. Vaughn said that legal surrogacies in California are pretty much airtight.
"If there was no genetic connection -- the mother didn't contribute the egg, if the father didn't contribute the sperm, and a surrogate carried -- still the intended parents will be legal parents in California," Vaughn said.
Legally airtight, that is, if an order for parentage -- or, in this case, order of paternity -- was filed. Still, Vaughn said there could be a fight over custody but added that if the surrogacy process was followed, it should be a short one, and a court would likely follow Michael Jackson's wishes.
Michael Jackson II, the baby so infamously dangled from a hotel room balcony in Germany, was known in his family as Blanket, reports the New York Times. He has an older brother, Prince Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., who is 12, and a sister, Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, 11.
First Published: Jun 30, 2009 5:57 PM EST
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