5 August 2025
National Surrogacy Week takes place in the UK from 1 – 7 August 2025. Its aim is to raise awareness and understanding about surrogacy. It’s also a time to highlight the positive impact of surrogacy, to support open, honest and positive communication and promote ethical practices and policies for professionals and families created through surrogacy. Similarly, it’s a time to celebrate the medical advancements which enable parents to create their families through fertility treatment and surrogacy and reflect on just how far surrogacy in the UK has come since the landmark ‘Baby Cotton’ case in 1985.
How Common Is Surrogacy?
Family Court Statistics provide insight into the numbers of surrogacy cases taking place in England and Wales. In 2008, there were just 67 parental order applications received by the English Family Court in respect of surrogate born children. Ten years later, 2018 saw 384 parental order applications being made, marking a 473 percent increase in a decade.
Since the start of National Surrogacy Week in 2019, the number of annual parental order applications for surrogate parents in England and Wales has risen to an average of roughly 509 per year. This rise in the popularity of surrogacy reflects the recognition of surrogacy as a mainstream family building option for prospective parents, and the willingness of the surrogates themselves to help others have much wanted children.
Is Surrogacy A Complex Process?
Whatever your personal circumstances, it’s a big decision to become a parent through surrogacy. Despite its potential to be an emotionally charged and challenging process, surrogacy can also be deeply rewarding for all parties.
However, surrogacy raises complex legal and practical issues given legal restrictions in the UK which prohibit legally binding surrogacy agreements. As such, surrogacy arrangements in the UK are based on trust and goodwill and surrogates still retain an absolute power of veto over the grant of a parental order to intended parents for their surrogate born child (albeit the vast majority of surrogacy arrangements go smoothly and a power of veto is very rarely exercised by surrogates in practice).
Additionally, UK law expects no more than reasonable pregnancy related expenses to be paid to surrogates and mandates that surrogacy arrangements should be altruistic in nature. This makes it important for all parties to obtain specialist legal advice at the outset and ensure that they have a viable legal and practical action plan so that they can meet the legal criteria for a parental order before embarking upon a surrogacy arrangement.
To find out more about surrogacy law in the UK click here.
To find out more about international surrogacy law click here.
Specialist Fertility and Family Law
Given rapid advances in reproductive medicine, growing trends in later-life parenthood and declining global fertility rates, it’s more important than ever to maximise reproductive choice and make informed decisions about pathways to parenthood including family building through surrogacy.
Specialist fertility and family law advice provides legal and practical strategies to effectively plan fertility and preconception, pregnancy, birth, family life and life after death (posthumous conception). These identify and address a range of legal and wider issues and challenges associated with family creation and fertility treatment, putting family building and life on a firm foundation and maximising successful results, including:
- Legal issues and family building options due to impaired fertility including cancer diagnosis, unsuccessful conception, age-related fertility decline, change in gender, delayed parenthood.
- Complex personal and family situations.
- Unexpected death of a loved-one and issues associated with posthumous storage and use of eggs, sperm and embryos in fertility treatment.donor conception/surrogacy (e.g. due to an accident or illness).
- Legal issues and options associated with assisted conception involving a surrogate, donor, co-parent or an ex-partner (e.g. legal parentage, parental rights, financial responsibility and dispute mitigation).
- Legal and wider aspects of international surrogacy or a UK surrogacy arrangement.
- Difficulties with storage and use of frozen eggs, sperm and embryos in fertility treatment and surrogacy in the UK (e.g. problems with consent).
- Issues with import of frozen gametes and embryos into the UK for use in fertility treatment and surrogacy (e.g. due to anonymous and commercially obtained gametes and embryos engaging UK public policy restrictions).
- Issues with the export of frozen gametes and embryos abroad for use in fertility treatment and surrogacy (e.g. consent and storage term difficulties).
- Legal and biological parentage issues and disputes (e.g. concerning DNA testing, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, rectification of birth certificate, declaration of parentage, step-parent adoption, recognition of overseas adoption, parental order following surrogacy).
- Care and upbringing of children following a dispute with an ex-partner, parent, donor or surrogate (e.g. contact, residence, financial arrangements, parental responsibility, specific issue or prohibited steps).
- Expert witness fertility, surrogacy and donor conception law services.
We provide a range of specialist legal strategies and solutions to assist with the management of surrogacy law, legal parentage, parental responsibility, birth certificates and the upbringing of surrogate born children. If you are considering, or are part way through, a surrogacy arrangement in the UK or internationally and you would like to discuss your situation or you require specialist fertility, surrogacy, donor conception and family law assistance please contact Louisa Ghevaert by email louisa@louisaghevaertassociates.co.uk or by telephone+44 (0)20 7965 8399.
Images: Louisa Ghevaert CEO & Founder Louisa Ghevaert Associates
To find out more about Louisa Ghevaert click here.
