Introduction
The judgment of Mrs Justice Gwynneth Knowles in Re Q (Surrogacy: Legal Advice) [2026] EWHC 1538 (Fam) represents the latest of a growing body of High Court decisions laying bare the profound challenges that can arise in international surrogacy arrangements. That the case before the court should involve a clinic, a surrogate, and a child spread across four separate jurisdictions and three continents is, by now, a familiar situation. What is notable about Re Q is the candour with which the court articulates the absence of adequate legal advice and the firmness of the judicial admonition that follows.
Facts of the case
Mr A is a British citizen of Serbian origin who, following a medical assessment in 2022, resolved to become a parent through surrogacy as a single man. Without independent legal advice, he engaged Dogus IVF, a clinic in Northern Cyprus recommended through a family connection, which directed him to Full Success Medical Consulting, a surrogacy agency operating from the same premises. Mr A was matched with Ms X, a Kyrgyzstani national then working in Dubai. A surrogacy agreement, expressed to be “guided by the current legislation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,” was executed in March 2023, shortly before embryo transfer.
The agency assured Mr A that the birth “could be in any country regardless as the surrogacy was based on Cypriot laws”, a proposition Mrs Justice Knowles found to be as legally untenable as it is commercially convenient. Greece, Moldova and Serbia were each canvassed as potential birth locations, despite a Serbian lawyer advising against that jurisdiction and confirmation from the Serbian Embassy in Bucharest that Moldova possessed no domestic surrogacy law. When complications prevented Ms X from travelling to Moldova, Q was born in Kyrgyzstan in November 2023, a jurisdiction in which, as Mr A subsequently discovered, surrogacy offered no legal route to parenthood for a single man.
The consequences were considerable. Q entered the United Kingdom only in July 2025, twenty months after her birth, following an initially rejected passport application (a second successful application having been made with the assistance of an immigration solicitor), and repeated adjournments of the parental order proceedings until Q was able to travel to this jurisdiction.
The legal framework
The governing statutory framework is section 54A of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. The statutory criteria (genetic connection to the applicant, domicile and home in this jurisdiction, the surrogate’s free and unconditional consent, no prohibited payments, and the primacy of the child’s lifelong welfare under section 1(2) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002) were, on the facts, met and were largely uncontroversial.
The judgment’s most significant legal contribution is Mrs Justice Knowles’ characterisation of the amended list in surrogacy cases, first formulated by Theis J in Re Z (Foreign Surrogacy) [2024] EWFC 304 (and amended in subsequent cases). It sets out matters that intended parents ought to address before embarking on an international surrogacy arrangement. At paragraph 23 of the judgment, Mrs Justice Knowles makes plain that the amended Re Z list “does not constitute a list of additional criteria required to satisfy the section 54/54A criteria.” It is a guide to good practice, not a statutory gateway. Where matters of public policy or harm to the child are engaged within the welfare assessment, scrutiny of relevant elements of the list may inform those questions, but it imposes no freestanding legal test that applicants must independently discharge.
The decision and lessons
The court granted a parental order in favour of Mr A. The statutory criteria were met. Payments of 36,687 euros in clinic and agency fees and 10,000 euros by way of compensatory payment to Ms X were authorised, and the welfare assessment was unambiguously positive. Q (described by the Parental Order Reporter as cherished, healthy, and thriving in the care of a devoted father) plainly needed a parental order to give permanence and security to her family life. The absence of one would, as the court observed, deny her the social and emotional benefits of formal recognition of a relationship that already existed in every meaningful sense.
The decision was, however, accompanied by clear judicial observations on aspects of the case considered to be less than satisfactory. Mrs Justice Knowles characterised the agency’s assurances to Mr A as “glib,” finding that they “build into any such surrogacy arrangement legal uncertainty, if not downright illegality.” The court found that Mr A had acted in good faith, albeit naively. Warning signs had been present and overlooked. Legal assurances from the agency were never provided in documentary form, a Serbian lawyer had counselled against Serbia, and the Embassy in Bucharest had confirmed the absence of Moldovan surrogacy law. Each of those factors ought to have prompted interrogation of the agency’s position by Mr A well before Q was born in an unplanned jurisdiction.
The court’s closing observation carries the most salutary message. Mrs Justice Knowles made clear that were Mr A to seek a further parental order in similar circumstances, the court might be “less prepared to exercise its powers in his favour.” That measured but unmistakeable intimation signals that the equitable indulgence extended to good-faith applicants has limits. The lesson of Re Q extends beyond the procedural. It is a call for structural change in how intended parents approach international surrogacy arrangements. Independent legal advice, obtained before any arrangement is entered into and across every jurisdiction material to the conception, pregnancy, birth, and travel of the child, is not a refinement to be sought after the fact. It is the essential foundation upon which any responsible international surrogacy journey must be built. The willingness of commercial agencies to offer sweeping jurisdictional assurances for which they bear no accountability, and the willingness of intended parents to accept them unchallenged, is a combination that courts cannot be expected to remedy indefinitely.
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