Surrogacy is an arrangement between one or more people who wish to parent a child and a person who agrees to carry and give birth to that child.

In English law the person who carries and gives birth to the child is the legal mother; regardless of where or how the child was conceived or born. It is only on the making of a “Parental Order” that the intended parents obtain legal parental rights which extinguish those of the surrogate.

These arrangements can be very complex and specialist legal advice, preferably prior to making any agreement, is required to avoid falling into the many pitfalls that arise. The most common pitfalls are usually issues over domicile, payments to the surrogate or obtaining the consent of – or locating – the surrogate after the child’s birth.

Jeremy Ford is uniquely placed to advise clients through this process having spent 6.5 years at Cafcass Legal, where he solely represented children caught adrift in complications relating to this area of the law. He has also acted as Advocate to the Court on a number of occasions in leading cases as his experience of representing children gives rise to special experience. An Advocate to the Court is appointed when there is a danger of an important and difficult point of law being decided without the court hearing relevant argument.