Jason Patric Celebrates Court Victory

Actor Jason Patric has a reason to celebrate as he landed the right to fight for custody of his four-year old son Gus.

Jason and his attorney appeared on U.S. breakfast show Good Morning America on Thursday, May 15, only a day after officials at a California appeals court granted him permission to claim custody of the kid. His son was received through artificial insemination.

Calling this victory “surreal”, Patric said, “It’s been 64 weeks since I’ve seen Gus, and I always believed that we were going to win this appeal because it was just wrong… and I had faith in the process.”

Jason and his ex-girlfriend, Danielle Schreiber, have been fighting over Gus’ custody for almost two years.
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has previously denied Patric access to his child. The judge based this decision on California law that gives the mother full custody unless there is a written agreement establishing parental rights before conception.

The case was back in court and Patric’s lawyer revealed that they plan to get the actor’s visiting right reinstated next week. It will happen before they continue to fight for custody.

Patric said, “In his (Gus’) mind I just disappeared. I didn’t tell him the truth. And it’s something that I deal with every day.”
“I have been a dad and I’m going to continue to be a dad. You can’t ever abandon a child.”

Making the case for his client on GMA, the lawyer added, “He’s not a donor. That’s the issue… He went to a clinic with Danielle in order to have a child together, so we don’t want to characterise him as a sperm donor in that sense.

The issue is the law has now been clarified by the court of appeal, and in fact changed, and these two competing statutes that created this problem have now been reconciled.”