california. surrogate motherhood

BACK

surrogate motherhood in california

Infertile couples around the world have found California to be a favorable legal forum for a surrogacy and egg donation. California Courts have taken the lead of all U.S. jurisdictions by favorably extending existing California Family Law statutes to protect all parties to surrogacy and egg donation pregnancies. Prospective parents, surrogates and egg donors can be reasonably certain that their intentions, as expressed by their agreement, will be upheld in California.

The California courts have consistently upheld the intended parents' rights and obligations to their parenthood when they use a surrogate or egg donor to help create their families. This result will generally hold true regardless of whether the parents use their own genetic material, donated eggs or artificially inseminate a surrogate.

A recent California court ruling has fostered what is already a favorable legal climate for surrogacy and egg donation agreements. The question to the court in In re Marriage of Buzzanca (March 10, 1998) was whether a married couple who used both anonymously donated sperm and egg and used a surrogate to carry the child, were the parents of the child born six days after the husband filed for divorce.

(The husband filed for divorce six days before the birth of the child, and the intended father claimed that since he was not the biological father of the child, he was not the child's father and could not be forced to adopt.) The case was heard by the California Fourth District Appellate Court, who issued its decisive opinion on March 10, 1998, declaring both intended parents to be the parents of the child.

BACK to the "Surrogate motherhood"