My partner and I are planning on having a baby using my partners sperm and a surrogate. How can we best protect our legal rights as parents?
This is an area where intelligent minds differ. Because — as a parent myself, and having seen too many cases where things didn’t work out as planned — my goal is to provide the best long term security for both parents and, most importantly, for the child, I prefer to handle these cases in the following manner: I go to court on behalf of the biological father while the surrogate is pregnant, and establish the biological father as the legal father. Especially if the surrogate is married, this avoids any issue about who the father is when the baby is born, and allows the biological father to put his name on the birth certificate. Then, as soon as the baby is born, we file a petition for a domestic partner adoption on behalf of the other partner. I believe that this procedure, although somewhat cumbersome, is the safest and most sensible way to make sure that both fathers end up with indisputable legal, parental rights that will be honored by other states and by the federal government.
