By complying with these agreements, you and your partner have full parental responsibility and are legally recognized as the parents of your child, regardless of who carried the pregnancy to term. In addition, your surrogate can rest assured that she is well cared for, has met her needs, and can focus on taking care of herself and your baby during pregnancy. Depending on the state you live in, you and your attorney may need to take additional steps before they can be recognized as your child`s legal parent. These steps are for the sole protection of you and your child. Legal procedures after birth are also relevant for intended parents who use surrogacy if one or both of you are not biologically related to the child. Surrogacy laws are different from traditional surrogacy laws, and these change depending on the state and country of the world. Some states even have variations at the district level. Finding a lawyer you trust is an important part of a happy and healthy pregnancy, and legal protection is the foundation to achieve it. Although your surrogate has many rights outlined in your contract, a pregnant carrier cannot choose to keep the child because she has no parental rights over the baby and is not biologically related.
However, it is also important to choose a reputable surrogacy agency to protect you and your surrogate during this process and provide more security. The State of Montana has no published legal law or jurisprudence that expressly permits or prohibits surrogacy. Yet Montana courts are generally positive about surrogacy arrangements, and parentage orders before or after birth are usually issued if at least one of the intended parents shares a genetic relationship with the child. However, these decisions are at the discretion of the judge, so the results may vary by district and judge. While parentage orders can be obtained from a married or unmarried couple, or from an unmarried intended parent, an unmarried intended parent who is not genetically related to the child may have more difficulty obtaining parental rights. Adoptions by the second parent (for unmarried intended parents) and adoptions by stepparents (for married intended parents) are also possible. New Hampshire has a very extensive legal system that governs surrogacy arrangements. The intended parents must be married and at least one of them must provide gametes. The surrogate has 72 hours after birth to decide if she wants to keep the child. The agreement must be previously approved by the court, the assessments and advice of the parties must be carried out before fertilization of the surrogate mother, home studies of all parties must be carried out, all parties must be 21 years of age or older, the intended mother must not be physically capable of giving birth to a child, the eggs must come from the surrogate or intended mother (no donor eggs), The surrogate mother must have had at least one previous delivery, genetic counseling is required if the surrogate is 35 years of age or older, and there is a 6-month residency requirement for the pregnant mother or intended parents. Expenses are limited to medical expenses, lost wages, insurance, legal fees and home education.
The cost of arranging a surrogacy contract is prohibited. There are also provisions that govern what happens in the event of breach or termination of the contract. Each surrogacy agency`s selection process is different, but should include extensive medical, social, and psychological screenings to monitor and report possible concerns in order to provide you and your surrogate with the happiest and healthiest pregnancy. The state explicitly prohibits surrogacy under Arizona`s revised law — 25-218 — making surrogacy contracts legally unenforceable. Following an Arizona court decision in 1994 that allowed intended parents to rebut the presumption that the gestational carrier is the legal mother, Arizona courts began issuing prenatal parentage orders (while insisting that the underlying contracts were unenforceable). Prenatal parentage orders are now likely to be issued if both intended parents (married or unmarried) are genetically related to the child. If an egg or sperm donor is used and at least one of the intended parents is genetically related to the child, a prenatal order may be possible, but results vary greatly by county and judge. If neither of the intended parents is genetically related to the child, a parentage order is not possible and a married heterosexual couple must instead wait until the birth of the child to file an application for adoption by a step-parent. Two-parent adoptions are prohibited in Arizona, so same-sex couples with no genetic link to the child have little or no recourse to obtain their parental rights unless they leave the state to obtain a second-parent adoption. The request for confirmation of parental status must be submitted within three days of birth by a surrogate mother in accordance with Florida statutes § 742.16.
If the court approves the application, the intended parents exercise their legal parental rights. Commercial surrogacy is legal in India(1), Ukraine and California, while it is illegal in England, many states in the United States and Australia, which only recognize altruistic surrogacy. In contrast, countries such as Germany, Sweden, Norway and Italy do not recognise surrogacy arrangements. India has become a popular tourist destination for fertility. Every year, couples from abroad are attracted to India by so-called surrogacy agencies, as the cost of the entire procedure in India is less than a third of what is the case in the US and UK (10-20 lakhs). Surrogacy laws vary from state to state and can change quickly. First and foremost, the surrogate must reside in a state where commercial surrogacy is legal. If surrogacy violates state law, the court may declare the contract invalid and, in rare cases, participants may even be sued.
