Couple obtains a PRE-BIRTH declaration of parentage of their biological twins to be born through surrogacy.

Court order assures the only birth certificates ever issued correctly names the intended parents.

Shrybman Law Offices, P.C., recently helped a couple from South Carolina receive a court order to be named as parents on the birth certificates of twins before the children were born for them by a surrogate mother. That way, the only birth certificates ever issued for the babies would name the biological parents as the mother and father. There was no need to obtain a corrected or replacement birth certificate after the babies’ birth.

This case is only the most recent in a series of cases in which our firm has successfully obtained pre-birth declarations of parentage for babies to be born for them by surrogate mothers. Why, you might ask, is this an issue in the first place? Because obtaining a correct birth certificate is not an automatic outcome when surrogacy is involved.

Couples and individuals seeking to have children through surrogacy have two primary goals:

1. To bring the newborn into their growing family

2. And to have official legal documentation reflecting their parentage of the child or children. In many cases and states, this can involve replacing an initial birth certificate that named the surrogate mother - and sometimes even her husband - as the parents.

But even when the baby being carried by the surrogate is the result of an implanted embryo produced from the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg - making it their biological child - hospitals and government vital records agencies prefer the procedure of naming the apparent mother (the surrogate) on the birth certificate and leaving it to the couple to obtain a corrected certificate through a court process at some later time.

In this particular case, the Court agreed with our position that the Court was empowered to issue such a Judgment of Parentage even before the children were born. Essentially, the Court agreed with us that since the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is legally required to issue accurate birth certificates, the only accurate birth certificate in this case should name the intended parents who are also the biological parents. This was the Court’s ruling even though the mother is not the woman who was going to give birth, and the father is not the husband of the birth mother.

Besides strengthening the position for couples and individuals to obtain pre-birth declarations of parentage in pregnancies involving surrogacy, this case further demonstrated the most important fact we believe couples and singles seeking to build their families through surrogacy need to know:

It is legal for any one from anywhere to do any kind of surrogacy, regardless of their home state’s laws.

Helping couples and individuals from coast to coast for over 20 years
Taking advantage of Maryland’s "surrogacy friendly" laws, an important ruling in a successful appeal brought by our firm, and the "full faith and credit" clause of the U.S. Constitution, Shrybman Law Offices, P.C., has helped couples or singles in many different situations to build their families legally through any type of surrogacy - even when that option is not legal or easily accomplished in their home state.

In just the past few years, we have successfully completed dozens of surrogacies for clients from across the country, such as:

• Couples from Florida, Connecticut, Virginia, New Jersey, and Michigan, for whom surrogates were artificially inseminated with the husbands’ sperm and gave birth to babies who were then adopted by the intended mothers.
• Couples from New York, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania, who obtained pre-birth declarations of parentage for babies born for them by surrogates from implanted embryos created from the couples’ own sperm and eggs.
• Couples from New York and Virginia who each received pre-birth declarations of parentage for their children conceived through in-vitro fertilization that combined the husband’s sperm with eggs from anonymous or known donors, with the embryo implanted in the surrogate.
• A couple from South Carolina and North Dakota who successfully completed a surrogacy where eggs from the surrogate were retrieved from her, combined in vitro with the husband’s sperm, and the embryos transferred back to the surrogate, who gestated and delivered the resulting baby and one with twins.
• Couples from North Carolina, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania for whom the surrogates were artificially inseminated by their husbands using home insemination kits and the intended father’s sperm.
• Gay couples from California, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Florida and Indiana, with surrogates artificially inseminated by sperm from one of the partners and the resulting baby adopted by the other.
• Gay couples from Washington, D.C., New Jersey, and New York whose surrogates were implanted with embryos created from one partner’s sperm and a donated egg.
• Single men from New Jersey and Massachusetts who were declared the sole legal parents of babies born for them by surrogates artificially inseminated with their sperm, and with the surrogates’ names subsequently removed from the birth certificates.

A short explanation of why surrogacy is legal for you regardless of where you live
The legal foundation for this track record of successful surrogacies began to take shape with a Maryland Court of Appeals ruling that the Maryland residency of birth parents provided jurisdiction for Maryland courts in adoption cases regardless of the adoptive parents’ state of residency.

Because surrogacy is legal in Maryland and because surrogacy typically ends with an adoption or legal declaration of parentage for one or both of the intended parents, Shrybman Law Offices soon began to work with couples and singles looking for relief from their home states’ surrogacy-unfriendly laws. Under the principle established in our 1988 adoption case, the surrogate’s Maryland residency would allow intended parents from other states to complete their case in a Maryland Court in accordance with Maryland’s very surrogacy “friendly” laws. Then, thanks to the “full faith and credit” clause of the U.S. Constitution, when the newly legal parents take their child home, their state must recognize Maryland’s declaration of their parenthood even if surrogacy is illegal there.

Now with more than 20 years of experience in this specialized area of law, we developed a process for identifying and locating Maryland-resident surrogate candidates from whom intended parents living anywhere can select a surrogate to help them build their family. And as clarified and confirmed by the experience of Shrybman Law Offices clients, Maryland today offers a friendly legal environment that recognizes the right of individuals and couples to be named as parents on the birth certificates of children born for them through surrogacy.

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