Couple in 60s win right to keep package deal surrogate twins

A BRITISH couple in their 60s have been allowed by a judge to keep twins born to a surrogate mother in Ukraine.

The couple had been trying to have children throughout their 38-year marriage.

But their hopes faded after IVF treatment failed when the wife was in her early 40s, more than two decades ago.

They turned for help to a surrogacy clinic that charged them an all-inclusive price of £23,000 for a baby fathered by the husband and carried t hrough pregnancy by a mother living in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.

But following the birth of twins, who they brought to the UK, their efforts to have a family led to a High Court case. This began after the clinic refused to answer queries or give legal details on the case, the surrogate mother disappeared and the couple were unable to answer questions on whether she was willing to give up her babies.

In a ruling published yesterday, Mrs Justice Theis granted parental orders making the couple the legal mother and father of the 21-month- old twins.

The couple, both approaching retirement age, had to satisfy the judge that the twins would be looked after if their own health fails. She made her ruling after hearing that a niece of the husband will guarantee to step in if the couple become ill or disabled.

The judge, sitting in Canterbury, warned that their experience was an ‘example of the difficulties that can be incurred if specialist legal advice is not taken before entering into a foreign surro-- gacy arrangement’. She ordered that the family members and the children cannot be named.

Mrs Justice Theis said the couple ‘spent many years trying to conceive a child of their own’, but ‘following a number of IVF procedures, both here and abroad, they were advised to consider surrogacy’.

The couple bought a package deal with a clinic in Ukraine, backed up by an agreement prepared by a Kiev company called BioTexCom.

The price included payments to the surrogate mother, medical costs, legal help to get birth certificates and passports, plus a flat for the husband and wife in Ukraine while they waited for their children to be born.

Mrs Justice Theis said the agreement meant ‘it was not possible to establish whether the eggs used were donor or the surrogate mother’s eggs. Further, there is a lack of clarity about the payments made to the surrogate mother.’

The couple met the surrogate mother twice. Once during the 15-week pregnancy scan and once after the twins were born in August 2013, when the father collected the babies from the hospital.

In February last year, the couple returned to Britain with the twins to face a mountain of legal problems.

Under the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, they could not win legal rights to the children unless it was clear the birth mother had decided to give up her babies.

But the clinic that arranged the pregnancy refused to give details about the mother and her wishes, citing Ukrainian data protection law.

Staff said the mother had ‘returned to Russia’.

‘Example of the difficulties’