Natalie was delighted to be invited to speak at the Modern Families conference in St Helier, Jersey on Friday 4 October. A gathering of leading lawyers, practitioners and academics, the conference (organised by the Association of Lawyers for Children and Hanson Renouf advocates, and chaired by His Honour Judge Bellamy) addressed the challenges facing modern families throughout the UK.
The keynote speaker was Mrs Justice Theis, the High Court judge who many of our clients know as the court’s main international surrogacy judge. Theis J recounted the revolution of judicial thinking on same sex parenting since the 1970s, and talked about the court’s current experience of international surrogacy. She warned of the ‘ticking time bomb’ of future legal problems for parents who have had a child through surrogacy but not resolved the UK legalities properly.
The one day conference covered a broad range of topics including same sex parenting, surrogacy, adoption and fostering, with speakers from a legal, academic, medical and social work background. Natalie spoke on the subject of ‘IVF, surrogacy and donor parenting’, describing what we see happening on the ground with our fertility law work, including divorces involving children conceived through assisted reproduction, same sex parenting disputes and surrogacy. Natalie spoke out about how UK surrogacy law is currently failing parents, surrogates and children, and desperately needs to be reviewed and updated.
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