§ 581-408 Absence of surrogacy agreement

If a surrogate has a child but there's no surrogacy agreement in place, the court doesn't use surrogacy rules to figure out who the legal parents are. Instead, it falls back on New York's regular parentage laws, the same ones used in cases that don't involve surrogacy at all.

This means the court will look at things like who gave birth to the child, genetics, marriage status, and other standard legal factors to decide who the parents are. Without a signed surrogacy agreement, none of the special legal protections or processes built for surrogacy arrangements apply. This can make the situation more complicated and less predictable for everyone involved, including the intended parents and the surrogate.

For this reason, having a proper surrogacy agreement in place before the child is born is very important. It gives everyone clear legal rights and avoids the uncertainty of having a judge sort out parentage using laws that weren't designed with surrogacy in mind.