The nursery at Jordan and Tammy Myers’ home in Grand Rapids, Michigan is painted gray, white, and midnight blue for the couple’s newborn twins. Her 8-year-old daughter Corryn can’t stop talking about how excited she is to finally be a big sister.
But before the state of Michigan recognizes the couple as the babies’ rightful parents, the Myerses must adopt them.
That’s because the babies were not carried by Ms. Myers, and Michigan law does not automatically recognize babies born to surrogates as legal children of their birth parents. On the birth certificates for the twins, a boy named Eames and a girl named Ellison, the surrogate mother and her husband are listed as parents, not Jordan and Tammy Myers.
Twice, judges have denied their requests to be declared the twins’ legal parents, despite a fertility doctor saying in an affidavit that the babies are the couple’s biological children. In separate affidavits, the surrogate mother and her husband have agreed that the Myerses will be the parents of the twins.
The Myerses have initiated the adoption process which includes home visits by a social worker, personal questions about their upbringing and approach to parenting, and criminal background checks. They said they had already submitted their fingerprints.
To prove that they are able to adopt their own children is “insulting,” said 38-year-old Myers.
“We successfully raised a loving and caring 8-year-old child and that is not being considered in this process,” he said.
Rather than looking forward to leaving the hospital with the twins, who were born eight weeks premature on Jan. 11, the couple must receive letters of reference to send to the state. Ms. Myers said they needed “temporary permission” from surrogate mother Lauren Vermilye to bring the babies home.
Some states have comprehensive laws that explain the rights of a surrogate mother and the people who want to be the parents, while other states don’t have laws on surrogacy, he said.
In 2020, New York passed a law that lifted the ban on compensation for women who act as surrogates. Louisiana prohibits surrogacy compensation, but recognizes agreements or contracts in which a woman has volunteered to be a surrogate mother, Vaughn said. The state only allows such agreements for married heterosexual couples.
But Michigan has sweeping law that doesn’t recognize an agreement with a woman willing to inseminate or implant an embryo, he said. The law also does not recognize the parental rights of the intended parents.
“There’s really no other state like Michigan,” said Vaughn.
The story of the Myerses, covered by Fox17 television and other news outlets, underscores Michigan’s unique status among the States.
His special position is the result of a 1988 act known as the Surrogate Parenting Act, passed in 1985 following the Baby M case, in which a New Jersey woman agreed to traditional surrogacy in exchange for $ 10,000 the surrogate mother used her own egg to father a child for a couple.
After the baby was born, the surrogate mother decided to keep the baby, which resulted in a series of painful court battles that reached the New Jersey Supreme Court and granted custody to the birth father.
“Michigan essentially made a decision that this tragic situation shouldn’t happen in their state, and they just decided to ban it outright,” Vaughn said.
Under Michigan law, paying a woman as a surrogate mother is a criminal offense, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $ 50,000, said Melissa Neckers, the couple’s lawyer.
Any arrangement a woman makes to act as a substitute and then give the child parental or custody rights is “void and unenforceable” by law. This means that anyone in Michigan who has a child through surrogacy must go to a judge to be recognized as a legal parent or go through the adoption process.
Ms. Neckers said judges in Michigan, according to her census, have given parental rights to people who want to be parents on at least 72 cases since 2005.
Victoria Ferrara, an attorney specializing in assisted reproductive technology and founder of Worldwide Surrogacy Specialists, said a stigma persists in surrogacy.
“There are still people who believe that it is exploitation of women, that it is only for the wealthy, that people who want and cannot have children should just adopt,” she said.
In 2015, the Myerses were trying to have a second child when Ms. Myers, 39, learned she had breast cancer. She had her eggs harvested immediately before undergoing multiple surgeries, including a partial hysterectomy and a bilateral mastectomy.
The couple said they knew Michigan law would make surrogacy complicated. They could have left the state to find a surrogate mother, but the removal would have prevented them from being part of the pregnancy. Ms. Myers also said the cancer treatments were in debt to the couple and were unable to pay for surrogacy, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
In a post on Facebook, the couple described their story and needed to find an unpaid volunteer willing to help them give birth to a baby. Ms. Vermilye, 35, who also lives in Grand Rapids, read the mail and sent them a message that she was interested.
“My husband and I had spoken about my gift of being very easy to carry and deliver,” said Ms. Vermilye, who has a girl and a boy who are 6 and 9 years old. “We found it kind of unfair that we had it so easy and have friends and family who don’t. “
In June 2020, embryos created by in vitro fertilization with Ms. Myers eggs and Mr. Myers sperm were transferred into Ms. Vermilye’s uterus in a process known as gestational surrogacy.
Ms. Vermilye and her husband Jonathan became close friends of the Myerses. The Vermilyes have made affidavits through their attorney Dion Roddy stating that they are not the birth parents of the twins.
But judges in Kent County, Michigan have refused to give the Myerses a hearing.
“While this court has serious concerns about the wisdom of the Surrogate Parenting Act of 1988 today, such concerns should better be left to the legislative / political arena,” wrote Judge Daniel V. Zemaitis in a December 3 ruling in which the parents of Couple’s rights were denied.
Mr Roddy said other judges in the state granted parental rights when the biological father sought them. In January, just before the twins were born, Mr. Myers and Ms. Vermilye filed another motion asking the court to grant Mr. Myers parental rights.
But four days after the twins were born, another judge, Scott Noto, denied the motion, saying he was being asked to validate a contract the state had annulled. “The court has no power to enforce such a treaty,” he wrote.
Ms. Vermilye said the court decisions were neither “fair” nor “friendly”.
Ms. Neckers said the couple could appeal the decisions, but the process could take as long as the adoption.
The couple said they now want state law to pass a law that would help future families avoid a similar ordeal.
“We are literally stressed and panicking around the clock,” said Ms. Myers. “Especially Jordan. I have never seen him so broken and upset. “
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