Appeals Court Calls on Tennessee Legislature to Decide Surrogacy Issues

Tennessee law case summary on surrogacy in family law from the Court of Appeals.

In re: Amadi A. – Tennessee surrogacy

The intended parents in this Tennessee surrogacy case filed a petition to be named the legal parents and have their name on the child’s birth certificate.  The intended parents entered into a contract with the surrogate mother and her husband in which the surrogate mother would serve as the gestational carrier of a child from the father’s egg and sperm and an anonymous third party egg donor.  The twin children were born in April 2014.  The next day, they filed a joint petition to name the intended parents as the parents, and a judge signed that order the same day.

In May, the Tennessee Department of Health filed a motion to intervene in the case, and asked the court to set aside the portion of the order naming the donor mother as the legal mother, since she was neither the gestational nor the genetic mother.  The court agreed and modified its prior order, resulting in the gestational mother’s name being placed on the birth certificate.  Both sets of petitioners then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals looked at earlier cases construing the Vital Records Act and agreed with the trial court that the gestational mother should be listed on the birth certificate.  It noted that the birth certificate recorded data concerning the pregnancy itself, and ruled that the legislature’s intention was to include as mother on the certificate the person who had undergone the pregnancy.  For that reason, the appeals court affirmed that portion of the lower court’s ruling.

The intended parents also appealed that portion of the lower court’s later ruling naming the gestational mother the legal mother.  The court reviewed the handful of prior Tennessee cases discussing surrogacy, and noted that there were four factors to consider:  genetics, gestation, intent to take on parental responsibilities, and the nature of the controversy.  Of course, in this case, the intended mother was neither the genetic nor gestational mother of the children.  The parties attempted to frame the case as being a declaratory judgment, but the court noted that a declaratory judgment wasn’t proper, since there was no real dispute between the four parties to the case.  The court recognized the parties’ frustration with the lack of clarity, but noted that it was an issue that the legislature should have addressed.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part, and remanded the case for further proceedings.

No. W2014-01281-COA-R3-JV (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 24, 2015).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Tennessee Divorce Laws.