Although the scientific technology has been there for quite some time

the law has been quite slow generally to catch up.

So it is not always as straightforward as people would think

especially if there's international aspects.

A surrogacy arrangement is quite complex legally

and it is one area of law in which there is no substitute for early advice.

Simply to make sure that you can follow

and put in place all of the necessary arrangements to ensure that

you then become the child's legal parents

further down the line because if those steps aren't followed

and if the necessary safegaurds are not put in place it can mean

that the commissioning parents are not able to take legal parenthood

of the child and obviously that creates long-term problems.

In English law a surrogacy arrangement isn't legally binding and it's not legally enforceable

and any form of commercial surrogacy is illegal

and is treated, obviously, as a criminal activity. That's not the case in some other

countries and whilst it is quite common to go over to other countries because

there is a greater supply of

willing surrogates it's very important to ensure that any arrangement that takes

place abroad is not going to fall foul

of regulations and laws here because that means it won't then

be recognised and then placed for a parental order

as people would hope. People often don't realise that the

common sense basis that you would assume would be the arrangements

or in fact the scientific parenthood, genetic material,

often don't translate to who is the legal parent.

So depending where the child's been born and where the arrangements have been made

you can have a situation whereby a child has, for example, no legal parents or

for example four legal parents and often the legal parenthood doesn't follow what

you would necessarily expect

in terms of who's been involved and who's genetic material's been used

and thats the classic example of why it is so important to get advice early on

so that you know where you stand

and also then what steps you need to take in order to make sure that you are the

child's legal parents for the rest of their childhood.