The EU drive to standardise bananas is starting to make sense to me. My head is spinning with legal matters and I am now rarely sure what version of English I am supposed to be speaking. There is no area more country specific and more jargon specific than the law and talking to two legal systems is very confusing. The American terms seem to be lawyer and attorney but I am not sure what the hierarchy is. In the UK we have solicitors and barristers and the latter we refer to as silks (if you are in Scotland a barrister is called an advocate).
I have now finally spoken to the immigration lawyer/solicitor/god knows what and he has given us some interesting news. It's not so much a law we are fighting against but a 'regulation'. Apparently there is a new regulation that was introduced in 2006 that means that if a British citizen is named on the Birth Certificate of a child born abroad that child will inherit British citizenship. The caveat, as I mentioned before, is that this applies only if the mother is unmarried.
Our surrogate is going through a divorce at the moment and if that is complete our immigration problems are over because Harriet will be a British citizen. In theory all we do is register her birth at the British consulate in Los Angeles and they will issue us with a British birth certificate. Then she should get her passport although currently the lawyer is fighting with the Home Office to get the consulates to understand that there is no requirement for 'Registration' (whatever that is) and indeed in his view this thing Registration would be illegal anway. This sort of confusion is typical.
If she is still married then we are going to need the Home Office to give guidance on what they would do. The lawyer will write to the senior civil servant to alert him that this case may happen and that they should be prepared to give a view. We have also been in contact with our local MP, who sent as an encouraging letter this week offering to help us.
So it's all going on. That's even before I have mentioned that our surrogate has started Braxton Hicks, which we know from the books is a possibility at seven months, but certainly focuses the mind on how close we are getting. Work is also very active and I had the misfortune this week to learn that one of my colleagues whom I liked has lost his job. He was one of the most able people I know and it brought into sharp focus how savage the market is at the moment. I am expecting further news in the next week. It will not be a happy Christmas for so many people but whatever happens at work and in the courts at least we still have the most important reason in the world to be happy.
Friday 28 November 2008
Sunday 23 November 2008
Frustrations
It's been a long time since I have written here. Mostly that's due to the confusion and then frustration that we have been feeling over the UK law and deciding what to do about it.
The good news is that we have found someone who understands our case relatively well and who has already obtained a barrister's opinion. The bad new is what that opinion says.
The following is what we understand. The UK law will regard the surrogate as the mother come what may and will not pay any attention to Californian birth certificates etc. UK surrogacy law will allow for something called a parental order which can be used to extinguish the rights of the surrogate but this option is not open to us. The current Human Embryology and Fertility Act only allows married couples to obtain a parental order. There is an Act of Parliament currently in progress that will extend the rights to civil partnerships but this will not apply to us since the surrogacy took place abroad. Even more frustrating is the fact that the UK law will regard the husband of the surrogate if she is married as the father. If she is unmarried at the time of the birth this will be much simpler since it will be possible for Jonathan to be regarded as the father and the child to inherit his UK citizenship. Otherwise we will need to prove genetic parentage. In UK law I would be nothing to her though.
The good news is that we have found someone who understands our case relatively well and who has already obtained a barrister's opinion. The bad new is what that opinion says.
The following is what we understand. The UK law will regard the surrogate as the mother come what may and will not pay any attention to Californian birth certificates etc. UK surrogacy law will allow for something called a parental order which can be used to extinguish the rights of the surrogate but this option is not open to us. The current Human Embryology and Fertility Act only allows married couples to obtain a parental order. There is an Act of Parliament currently in progress that will extend the rights to civil partnerships but this will not apply to us since the surrogacy took place abroad. Even more frustrating is the fact that the UK law will regard the husband of the surrogate if she is married as the father. If she is unmarried at the time of the birth this will be much simpler since it will be possible for Jonathan to be regarded as the father and the child to inherit his UK citizenship. Otherwise we will need to prove genetic parentage. In UK law I would be nothing to her though.
The best we can do is obtain a residency order. Both of us can apply for this and it would grant parental rights to both of us but it would not extinguish the rights of the surrogate under UK law. Yes it would be extremely unlikely that any UK family court would judge it to be in the child's best interests to be taken away from us but it is the mere possibility that is so infuriating. Adoption is not a possibility in the UK because we have been advised that it is a criminal offence to bring a child into the UK from abroad with the intention of adoption. This is supposed to protect children from the developing world being trafficked for adoption - you must only go through international adoption agencies prior to bringing the child back - but it affects us nonetheless.
So there we go - the law wants to stick its nose in, it doesn't care what decision a court of a civilised western ally has reached and it presumes to understand parentage based on the rules of the seventeenth century. We will just need to obtain a residency order and grin and bear it but it doesn't mean we have to like it.
Leaving that to one side we were delighted to hear today that she is doing extremely well and is getting into position. Six thousand miles away we feel so distant but it gave us such a tremendous boost to hear the news and we simply cannot wait till she arrives. J has booked his flights out and will be there in sixty days - it all seems to be getting rather close. There's the small matter of Christmas to deal with but then it is very much all systems go.
So there we go - the law wants to stick its nose in, it doesn't care what decision a court of a civilised western ally has reached and it presumes to understand parentage based on the rules of the seventeenth century. We will just need to obtain a residency order and grin and bear it but it doesn't mean we have to like it.
Leaving that to one side we were delighted to hear today that she is doing extremely well and is getting into position. Six thousand miles away we feel so distant but it gave us such a tremendous boost to hear the news and we simply cannot wait till she arrives. J has booked his flights out and will be there in sixty days - it all seems to be getting rather close. There's the small matter of Christmas to deal with but then it is very much all systems go.
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