Episode 156 – Are your names on the birth certificate?

Are your names on the birth certificate? The current process is the surrogate and her partner, if she has one, go down on the first birth certificate as birth parents. The reason for this is so the parentage can be transferred from her to the IPs, the intended parents, who are now parents. Since there are lawyers involved before pregnancy while preparing the surrogacy agreement, that essentially means the surrogate pregnancy was commissioned by the parents.

00:33
The IPs now go back to their initial lawyer with the first birth certificate and an application is made through the family court, but check the specifics for your stay in Australia. There is also an option to do this legal paperwork yourself. Once the parentage order is approved, that gives permission for a second birth certificate to be drawn up, which will then have the names of both parents on it. A copy of the original certificate is kept at birth, deaths and marriages. Often for surrogate so,

01:01
Having that first birth certificate is a lovely record of what we did. It’s a type of memento that our gift is recognized legally. The birth certificate process is very similar in each state of Australia currently. Things may change slightly in the coming years since we’re in the middle of an inquiry by the Australian Law Reform Commission right now as I’m speaking this in mid-2026. The suggestion put forward by this inquiry is to skip the step of the first birth certificate.

01:28
Essentially, if the surrogate agrees again at birth to relinquish the child, and trust me, that’s exactly what we want as surrogates, then the first birth certificate could be issued with the parent’s names on it. I’d like to add as a side note that surrogacy really does come down to trust, not these legal agreements, because they’re actually not enforceable except for the surrogacy related costs, and they shouldn’t be enforceable because you can never force a woman to hand over a baby, nor force us to have a termination.

01:57
or certain tests during pregnancy. So if you’re an IP listening to this and are nervous at the beginning because you fear that we will want to keep your baby, oh, we don’t. If a surrogate was looking to have another child, there are much easier ways for her to go about that than having to do surrogacy. Our biggest fears are that they won’t take the baby and we’ll be left with a keeper child that we don’t want. We have finished having our family and now we want to see you expand yours.

02:26
And also, as IPs, they trust us to do the right thing for nine months in pregnancy to share our body and grow their baby. And we trust them to do the right thing for the rest of time because there is no law to force them to continue to have a friendship with us. So there really is a lot of trust both ways. So yes, currently the surrogate does go down as birth mother on the first birth certificate, but trust me, we don’t want to keep your baby.

02:55
Once the parentage order has gone through, you, the now parents, will most certainly get your names on your child’s birth certificate. I hope that puts some fears at ease. You’re welcome to get in contact with me if you’d like to discuss this further. If you are enjoying this podcast, I kindly ask that you share it with others or leave a rating or a review wherever you listen to the show. If you’re looking for more support from me one-on-one, register for SASS at surrogacyaustralia.org.

03:23
and think of me as your Siri for surrogacy or your chat GPT. Until next time, welcome to the village.