Our service areas
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Surrogacy
We’re specialists in surrogacy law in England & Wales. For those wishing to start a family, surrogacy is an increasingly common avenue.
Whether you’re an individual or in a couple, anyone considering surrogacy needs expert legal advice from the very start. While the process doesn’t need to be complicated, it does take proper planning to make sure of that. We regularly advise intended parents or surrogates at the outset of their journeys.
We’ll help you to prepare for a smooth surrogacy and provide confidence in your position.
Following our early advice, we provide guidance throughout the entire process. Whether you’re an intended parent or surrogate, we’ll represent you during the Parental Order application — the essential process that ensures everybody’s parenthood intentions are recognised in law.
In some cases, complex legal issues can arise. Our team are firmly on your side to navigate any legal obstacles. Our lawyers have worked on landmark cases and contributed expertise to Parliament’s review of the law through the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Surrogacy.
Many surrogacy arrangements take place abroad. We regularly advise surrogates or intended parents involved in domestic and international surrogacy arrangements on the law as it stands in England & Wales. Many countries have vastly different laws on surrogacy. It’s therefore important to obtain legal advice in every jurisdiction involved in your arrangement.
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Donor conception and co-parenting
There are many circumstances in which families may turn to sperm or egg donation to build a family — whether you’re an individual, in a same-sex couple, experiencing fertility difficulties or part of a platonic group that wishes to co-parent while not being in a relationship.
While donor conception opens doors for many, it can also give rise to legal complications that require careful thought.
If donor conception might be an option for you, it’s important to ensure that you receive legal advice. This is especially the case if your gamete donation takes place outside of a clinic licensed in the UK by the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, or where the egg or sperm donor and the parents are known to one another.
The way in which you proceed with a donor conception arrangement can have wide-reaching consequences on the legal position of the donors, parents and child. We can support you in navigating these complexities to ensure that the arrangement is agreed upon and progresses as intended.
As with any family arrangement, disputes can arise with respect to children born via donor conception or raised within a co-parenting relationship. While we can help to prevent disputes at an early stage, they can’t always be avoided. As experts in family court litigation, we can assist you if this happens and support you through the various options to resolve your dispute.
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Legal parenthood
Legal parenthood defines who a child’s parent is in the law of England & Wales. It determines who will be treated as a parent for a number of legal matters including birth registration, nationality and immigration, inheritance entitlements and financial responsibility for the maintenance of children (among others).
There is an important distinction between legal parenthood and other forms of parenthood, such as biological or social parenthood.
There are many scenarios in which an individual’s genetic or psychological parents will not be their legal parent. For example, when donor gametes have been used or where someone has been adopted or raised by other family members. Complexities can arise where there is a mismatch between what people might have expected of their parenthood and the legal position.
We’re specialists in the complexities of legal parenthood. If you’re considering fertility treatment or concerned about a dispute, talk to us about your circumstances.
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Parental responsibility
Parental responsibility is the legal ability to make decisions in respect of a child’s upbringing and welfare. This is separate to legal parenthood.
A fundamental yet complex area of the law, parental responsibility can often be misunderstood. We understand that no family is the same — and neither is every family law dispute.
Often, a child will live with someone who plays a parental role (such as step parents, aunts and uncles or grandparents). However, without having obtained parental responsibility through a strictly defined method, these social caregivers may not actually have any legal authority to make decisions in the child’s life.
As leading specialists in litigation related to children, we can support you in identifying who has parental responsibility, advising on how best to obtain it or dealing with disputes that may arise with respect to parental responsibility.
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Declarations of parentage
As an emotively sensitive and technically complex issue, parentage speaks to the core of all our identities.
If there is a dispute or legal uncertainty about the identity of someone’s parent, this can be resolved by the court making a declaration of parentage or non-parentage.
There are often disagreements or uncertainty about the identity of a child’s father. Especially with the onset of commercially available DNA-testing technology, individuals might discover later in life that their actual parenthood is different to what they had believed. It’s more common than you might think for birth records to not reflect full information about parents. This can cause significant personal and practical difficulties.
In considering parentage disputes, the court will consider the available evidence and make a declaration to decide who shall be recognised (or not recognised) as a parent. Once a declaration is made, this will be the recorded position in respect of legal parenthood for a variety of purposes including record keeping, nationality, inheritance entitlements, nationality and financial responsibility for children.
Expert legal support can help you to navigate these issues. Our family law team specialises in the complexities of legal parenthood and is experienced in supporting individuals and families involved in declaration of parentage applications.
