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25
Feb
2025

Declaration of Parentage: Resolving Birth Registration, Parental Status & Identity

We are currently seeing heightened levels of uncertainty and change around the world, ranging from economic challenges to seismic shifts in geopolitics and rapid developments in artificial intelligence, on-demand digital technology, genetics and DNA testing, precision healthcare and assisted reproduction. These can impact all stages of the life cycle from pre-conception through pregnancy, birth, family life and end-of-life care. This evolving landscape can create complex issues about family formation, personal identity, birth registration, legal and biological parenthood, genetic and health issues and relationships with family and relatives. In turn, this can require effective legal strategies to address issues about personal identity, genetic testing, legal and biological parentage, birth registration and family dynamics.

20
Feb
2025

Judicial Warning & Naming 0f Serial Sperm Donor ‘Who Fathered 180 Children’

In a recently published family law case In the Matter of D [2023] EWFC 333, His Honour Judge Jonathan Furness KC took the unusual step to publicly name a serial sperm donor and warn the public and vulnerable women seeking to get pregnant of the dangers of unregulated private sperm donation. This followed a highly contested 2-year legal battle, described as a 'nightmare' and 'horror story', between a female same-sex couple and a prolific sperm donor who applied to court to be named on the child's birth certificate, obtain parental responsibility and contact with the child.

11
Feb
2025

Genetic Testing: A Non-Biological Father, Mistaken Birth Registration & Parental Responsibility Void Ab Initio

The recent case of KL v BA [2025] EWHC 102 (Fam) brings into focus the complex legal issues that arose when genetic testing showed that a non-biological father was registered in error on a child's birth certificate. The central issue in the case was whether the effect of a declaration of non-parentage in respect of the non-biological father who had mistakenly been registered as the child's father rendered his acquisition of parental responsibility void ab initio (never having had any legal effect) or whether this could only be removed by court order.

27
Jan
2025

Genetic Testing, Political Uncertainty & Citizenship: Family Law In Focus

As we start 2025, the evolving realities of direct-to-consumer DNA tests, political uncertainty and demand for foreign citizenship are increasingly calls to action. As people seek to understand and address these challenges it can create complex inter-related personal and legal questions. Such questions are increasingly drawing together and necessitating solutions that require specialist family law expertise. Successfully navigating a path through these choppy waters can require expert management and bespoke family law strategies to address the implications of genetic testing, legal and biological parentage, an application for a Declaration of Parentage and rectification of a birth certificate.

23
Jan
2025

Posthumous Conception In Focus

The law governing posthumous conception in England and Wales sets out clear legal requirements designed to protect an individual's right to consent to the use of their eggs, sperm or embryos in treatment after their death. Eggs, sperm and embryos represent a special class of reproductive cells. They are very private and intimate, representing unique reproductive building blocks in human conception and an individual's genetic legacy. As such, the law is designed to prevent the unauthorised use of a person's gametes (or embryos comprising these) in treatment without their specific consent in life and after death. However, the prescriptive legal framework governing posthumous conception is not without its challenges in real life. What can be done to overcome these challenges?

23
Dec
2024

Secret Sperm Donation & The Early Years of UK IVF

An article in The Telegraph (1) on 20 December 2024 has reported concerns by two individuals about early UK fertility clinic practices, having recently discovered that they share the same secret sperm donor; a scientist in charge of the laboratory in the 1970's on the floor above UK IVF pioneer Patrick Steptoe's clinic at Oldham Hospital. Fifty years on, this has come to light after both individuals registered for DNA tests on Ancestry.com, reportedly raising concerns about whether their mothers were unknowingly impregnated without their consent with donor sperm.

25
Nov
2024

The Future of Womb Transplants

On 20 November 2024, Louisa Ghevaert attended a Progress Educational Trust event "10 Years of Womb Transplants: What Have We learned? What Does the Future Hold?". This fascinating event looked at the important and pioneering uterine transplant work that has been undertaken over the last 10 years, starting with the world's first successful human womb transplant and live birth in September 2014. Since then, there have been more than 135 uterus transplants around the world, including news of the UK's first womb transplant in 2023. In doing so, uterus transplants offer hope and greater reproductive choice for women whilst raising complex medical, legal and ethical issues.

04
Nov
2024

Newborn Genome Sequencing At Birth: The Generation Study Progress Update

Louisa was pleased to attend Progress Educational Trust's event "Whole Genome Sequencing at Birth: Implementing The Generation Study" on 23 October 2024. This event provided a progress update on The Generation Study, which is an NHS embedded research study undertaking whole genome sequencing of 100,000 newborn babies at different hospitals across England. The Generation Study's aim is to better inform future decisions about using whole genome sequencing to support newborn screening and understand whether this can improve our ability to diagnose and accelerate access to treatment for rare genetic conditions.

29
Oct
2024

BBC News: DNA Testing and the Law, ‘I could have lost my child’ after flawed DNA test

Louisa Ghevaert was interviewed on 8 BBC Radio Stations on 23 October 2024 discussing issues and legalities associated with prenatal DNA testing and other forms of DNA testing. This followed news of a woman who received flawed DNA test results identifying the wrong man as her unborn baby's father, resulting in a lengthy legal dispute over custody of her child. The woman was reportedly one of dozens of women who received unreliable DNA test results from a Canadian laboratory which advertised online.

30
Sep
2024

Posthumous Conception & Surrogacy: The Importance of Consent

The case of Re G v Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority & Anor [2024] EWHC 2453 (Fam) raises important legal and factual issues about posthumous conception that have not previously been considered by the English Court. This case, in which Louisa Ghevaert Associates was instructed by the applicant mother, concerned the storage and use of a young woman's eggs, who tragically died in June 2023 within six months of receiving a breast cancer diagnosis. The mother sought permission to use her deceased daughter's 20 frozen eggs to have a baby through surrogacy.

20
Sep
2024

British Fertility Society’s Creating Modern Families Day 2024

Louisa Ghevaert was delighted to to deliver a surrogacy law update on 17 September 2024 at the British Fertility Society’s Creating Modern Families Day 2024 in London as part of the annual BFS Study Week. This training day was well attended by fertility clinicians, embryologists, nurses and other professionals. It also included a lively legal Question & Answer session, during which Louisa was pleased to answer a range of questions about legal parentage, donor conception and fertility treatment law, family building trends, complex personal situations and more.

15
Sep
2024

The Mail On Sunday: More Single Men and Men Over 50 and 60 Are Applying For Children Through Surrogacy

Louisa Ghevaert featured in an article in the Mail On Sunday on 15 September 2024 by Sanchez Manning about the numbers of single men and men over 50 and 60 applying to have children through surrogacy. Almost 300 men aged over 50 in England applied to become the legal father of a surrogate born child over the past five years (43 of whom are aged over 60).

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