Family Team Spring Summer Bulletin 2017

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Family Bulletin – Spring/Summer 2017

The pitter patter of obsolete‌legislation The news has been filled recently with an ongoing series of calls by surrogates, commissioning parents, lawyers, and other fertility professionals for significant reform of the current regime of surrogacy and fertility law in this country, which is at best outdated and at worst entirely unfit for purpose in a society where family structures are becoming increasingly complex. At risk of being incredibly, mind-numbingly dull, we will try to clarify the most important issues surrounding this area of law. Deep breaths and here we go... When a surrogate baby is born, their legal mother is always the woman who gave birth to them and her name goes on the birth certificate and if she is married at the time, or in a civil partnership, her spouse or civil partner must be named on the birth certificate. However this rule does not apply to unmarried/un-civil-partnered mothers. Their partner does not have to be listed on the birth certificate (although not everyone knows this and so sometimes they are listed there in error), so a biologically related commissioning father can usually be listed on the birth certificate. The commissioning mother (or biologically unrelated second parent in situations involving same-sex couples), has absolutely no automatic legal relationship whatsoever with the baby. In practice, what usually happens after birth is that the baby is handed over to the commissioning parents to take back to their home to begin the process of caring for and raising their new-born child. This happens in spite of the fact that usually both of the commissioning parents have no legal relationship to their baby. In order to obtain such a relationship, they have to apply to the court (within six months of birth) for a parental order to remedy this, so that they can make various decisions about their child for the rest of its life. A parental order is a unique thing in family law. It changes the child's legal status, like an adoption order does, but in a more comprehensive way. Rather than changing its status from that day onwards, it effectively retrospectively changes the entire legal status of the child, from birth. The common suggestion is that obtaining a parental order amounts to rubber stamping; it is unfortunately not so simple. It is a complex, usually lengthy, and often costly exercise. The court does not simply accept that the commissioning parents are biologically related to the baby and hand them a parental order; they have to prove that they meet various conditions as laid out in the Human If you would like more information on our services, please visit www.howardkennedy.com here you will find all our latest news, publications and events. This material is for general information only and is not intended to provide legal advice. Š Howard Kennedy LLP 2017


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