Friday Legal Updates™- France, Germany, & India Surrogacy

Surrogacy – Hello and happy Friday to all. Well, the cases that just keep on going are moving in some direction finally.

In France, the French couple who has been fighting the government for almost 8 years wins legal recognition of their children, although the children are still not recognized as French nationals.

“Partial victory in surrogacy battle - A FRENCH couple whose twin daughters were born to a surrogate mother in the US have won part of their long-running battle to be legally recognised as their parents.

Dominique and Sylvie Mennesson paid a woman in California about $10,000 in 2000 to carry their child.

The new-born twins, Isa and Léa, were given US birth certificates recognising the Mennesson couple as the legal parents – but the French authorities refused to accept these.

Surrogacy has been illegal in France since 1994. A draft law hoping to overturn this was presented to the Senate in January, but has yet to be discussed.

The Paris court of appeal has now agreed that the couple are the twins’ legal parents, but refused to consider the girls as French nationals.

Lawyers say this will cause a large number of administrative problems in later life, when the girls get married, need new passports or apply for certain jobs in the civil service.

The Mennesson couple say they will take their case to the Cour de Cassation, France’s highest court. They hope to set a legal precedent for other parents of children born to surrogate mothers, after six years of legal action. "

Now, in Germany, the couple with their twins who have been unable to leave India for over two years has begun to make demands on the Indian government – and, hopefully, a solution will come out of this mess.

“NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) to consider as a one-time measure the plea of a German couple for adoption of twins born through a surrogate Indian mother.

A bench of Justices G S Singhvi and Asok Kumar Ganguly granted four weeks to the agency to explore the possibility to help the German couple John Balaz and his wife on humanitarian grounds.

The apex court passed the direction after the couple told the bench that they were willing to go for an inter-country adoption as surrogacy is a punishable offence in their country.

The court had earlier on February 25 asked the CARA of Union Women and Child Welfare Ministry to consider grant of adoption rights as a ’special case’ to the German couple.

The court had passed the direction after the counsel for the union government told the bench that under the existing rules, the German couple cannot be granted adoption rights as such a privilege is available only if the children are abandoned by the biological parents.

In the present case, the government said the children were born through a surrogate mother and there was no provision under the law for inter-country adoption for children.

It however, offered to examine the plea for adoption of the German couple as a special case provided it was not treated as a precedent.

The court, in its earlier direction, had asked the government to examine the offer of the German couple to go for adoption of the kids as surrogacy is a punishable offence in Germany which was not willing to grant the surrogate children any citizenship or visa.

The Centre had earlier rejected the couple’s plea for grant of citizenship to the children on the ground that the statute does not provide citizenship rights to kids born….”