Husband who flew to Germany to conceive child with his infertile wife’s friend can keep the baby
A MARRIED man who conceived a baby by having sex with his infertile wife’s friend can keep the child, a judge has ruled.
The court heard the man’s wife was unable to give birth because of medical problems so the couple made a £2,000 surrogacy arrangement with an acquaintance in Germany, who is from the same West African country as the wife.
But the husband discovered that surrogacy by artificial insemination, a common method in England, was illegal in Germany – and so travelled to Germany in 2012 to conceive a child with the woman ‘in the usual way’, the court heard.
His wife told the High Court that she had ‘tried to black out the fact that her husband would be having sex because she knew that a child would come out of it’. But after the boy had been handed over to the couple, the biological mother said she wanted to raise him herself and appealed for his future to be settled under German law. She claimed the plan had always been that the child would live with her, and that the father would see him occasionally.
However Mrs Justice Pauffley ruled in the High Court in London that because the boy – who is now 18 months old – lives in England, the English courts have the right to make decisions about him.
She added: ‘The notion that the father and his wife would agree to proceed on the basis that the child would be brought up abroad with only occasional contact seems both illogical and implausible.’ The judge went on to say that the evidence of the couple was ‘infinitely more credible’ than that of the natural mother.