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What happens when fertility clinics get legal parenthood wrong?
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If you are an unmarried couple conceiving with donor sperm at a fertility clinic in the UK then you rely on your clinic both to provide good medical care and to ensure you will both become the legal parents of your child.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 creates a process which must be followed at a fertility clinic in order for a non-biological father or non-birth mother through sperm donation to become his or her child’s legal parent; both parents must receive counselling and proper information about the forms they are signing and then must complete and sign Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) Forms WP and PP. All this must be done correctly before conception takes place so that the requirements are met for legal parenthood to be established at the point of conception. If the process is completed correctly an unmarried non-biological father will be the legal father of his child and an unmarried non-birth mother will be the second legal parent (see NGA Law articles for
men using donor sperm and
lesbian non-birth mothers for more information about...
Read the full article here.
