For most people, Christmas is a time for family. That could be biological relatives, in-laws, children, or best friends who you regard as siblings – it all depends on your own personal definition of what family means to you.
For a rapidly increasing number of people in the UK, family takes the form of a surrogate pregnancy. Over the past decade, the BBC reports, the number of parental orders filed to legally transfer a newborn from the surrogate to the intended parent has grown from 117 in 2011, to 413 in 2020.
Under the current law, the surrogate is identified as the legal mother until this parental order is granted, leaving both parties vulnerable if the details are not agreed before birth.
As more children are born to surrogate parents, it’s increasingly important to make legal preparations to avoid disputes later. This is crucial in every individual case, but the quadrupling of surrogacy in the UK in the 2010s has magnified the issue.
Surrogacy mediation is a largely stress-free way to negotiate the terms of a surrogate pregnancy ahead of time, when disputes are less likely to arise.
A trained surrogacy mediator will not make any decisions for you, but will guide you through creating a surrogacy agreement that is clear about what each party will receive.
They will help all parties identify what they want from the surrogacy and beyond, so that the resulting agreement protects not only the hopeful parent(s) but also the person acting as surrogate.
You can agree upfront on matters like who will be the legal parent of the baby once it is born, what the surrogate parent will receive for their service, and whether they will have any access to the child after the birth.
By involving a mediator from the early stages of surrogacy you can navigate this sometimes complex process without any avoidable disputes.
At this time of year, thoughts inevitably turn to the family-focused festivities of the Christmas period, and this raises the question of whether to involve the surrogate parent in those memory-making moments.
There are no hard and fast rules on this – do what feels right for you – but the size of the market for surrogate Christmas gifts on websites like Etsy shows that more families are choosing to celebrate Christmas as one big extended family.
Again, surrogacy mediation can help you to make any such arrangements. In some cases, the surrogate might not want continued contact with the child once the surrogacy itself comes to an end, and it’s equally important to respect any such wishes.
This coming year is an important one for surrogacy, with the Law Commission due to publish a draft reform bill for surrogacy law by the end of 2022. Even beyond these changes, surrogacy mediation will remain a useful method by which to mutually and amicably agree on arrangements.
If you are entering into a surrogacy agreement or are already in dispute (whether you are the surrogate or the intended parent), Marcia Mediation is here to help.
We welcome all enquiries and will listen sympathetically to the circumstances of your case. Where possible, we work hard to resolve disputes with the minimum of stress, so you can get back to happy family life as soon as possible.
To learn more about surrogacy mediation or to book a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting, contact us today.
If you have any questions, call us on 07791 560 161 or fill out this form
