Interesting/disturbing surrogacy ruling.

[UglyGlassVase]

I came across this-
www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2019/43.html

Caveat- I may have misunderstood some of this as I am not familiar with the law.

My understanding of the above situation is that a married couple traveled to a foreign country and employed a surrogate mother who gave birth to twins.

The twins are biologically the children of the husband and the surrogate mother.

They returned to the UK and sought a parental order. When the court reviewed the order they couldn't make it because the couple were not able to provide proper evidence of the surrogate mothers consent and that they had only paid reasonable expenses.

The court asked for proper evidence of the above.

The couple said no and withdrew the parental order.

They have, at some point prior to this ruling, been granted a residency order (or whatever it's called now).

Sorry posted to soon.

I don't understand the wider mechanism of the law here so I don't know if there is any other recourse to provide a check on these parents to ensure they didn't simply go and buy an impoverished woman's children with questionable consent.

I read a lot of these rulings (although not usually this type) and I am used the the judges taking into account or making mention of other legal mechanisms that may kick in (usually to point out that such-and-such is a matter for the police or criminal court or w/e and not the court who is ruling). This isn't mentioned in this ruling.

Obviously a child arrangement order (I think that is what they are called) has been made so the children are well cared for but what is the mechanism for protecting the mother in this instance? Does anybody have any idea?

Hmm, interesting. The court clearly going out of its way here to put the interests of the children first and at great pains to explain this to the couple. My first reaction on reading is that the couple cannot provide evidence of consent from the birth mother and cannot provide evidence of payments being below the limit where the court would need to give permission. The latter points to commercial surrogacy. The former is concerning, especially given that the birth mother is also the biological parent.

Just goes to show that the court has little to no power at its disposal to take this couple to task for not meeting the necessary requirements and refusing to take part in a process they started just because it didn't go their way. In my opinion they're essentially circumventing UK law. Because the court is always looking at what is in the interest of the children and would not in all good conscience remove the children if they are presently cared for properly.

My instinctive reaction is that this is another reason to ban the whole thing altogether - the current system allows itself to be abused by people circumventing the rules, the proposed system eliminates any need to circumvent anything.

And we do not know whether the birth mother gave free and informed consent. After seeing what goes on where commercial surrogacy is legal that is a pertinent question with potentially distressing answers.