Six month deadline for applications for parental orders relaxed by the High Court

Section 54 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 (HFEA 2008) facilitates the transfer of legal parentage from the surrogate mother (and her husband/partner if applicable) to the commissioning parents through a parental order. The provision lays down a number of requirements that must be satisfied before a parental order can be issued by a court on application of the commissioning parents. Among these prerequisites is the requirement that ‘the application is made within 6 months of the birth of the child’, set out in section 54(3). This provision is of a particular relevance to the present case. In Re X
(Surrogacy: Time Limits) [2014] EWHC 3135 (Fam), the key question the High Court was faced with was whether a parental order could be granted even though the application was made after the expiration of the statutory six-month period.