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.
