Overseas Surrogacy

If you have clients in the United States exploring surrogacy overseas, they should proceed with caution. In several recent high-profile cases, the US government has denied birthright citizenship to children born overseas to same-sex married couples. In all three instances, the children have been treated differently from siblings either born earlier or that share biological ties to their US citizen parents.  These issues are a result of the application of decades old policies that have failed to keep up with the advancements in Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART) and the Trump Administrations current view that any child born to a gestational surrogate in these situations is to be treated as a child out of wedlock for citizenship purposes.