PARTIES TO THE SURROGATE MATERNITY AGREEMENT

Abstract

The article looks into subject composition of the surrogacy agreement. The analysis of the Family Code of Ukraine’s rules allowed to state that parties to the surrogacy contract are spouses and a surrogate mother. Altogether, it is concluded that a man and a woman not being officially married to each other. But those ones, willing to custom the surrogate motherhood services, are obligated to have contracted their marriage before entering into a surrogacy agreement, thus, proving seriousness of their intentions to be the parents of the child, born to the surrogate mother as the result of a human embryo transfer into her body; the embryo іs conceived by spouses as a result of the assisted reproductive technologies use. It has been proved that the Ukrainian Insurance Code should be amended according to which a single man and a single woman may be the customers of the surrogate motherhood services. Due to the conflict of laws, the article proposes to amend the current rules, in particular, to Part 2 Art. 123 and Part 2 Art. 110 of the Family Code of Ukraine. In addition, the study provides a new versions of these rules. Concluding that the customers of the surrogacy motherhood may be spouses (husband and wife), as well as a single woman or a single man. At the same time, the executor being a party to the surrogate motherhood agreement is surrogate mother, to whom, in addition to the legislative requirements (full age, legal capacity, having her own healthy child, absence of medical contradictions, and lack of direct genetic connection with the child), there are the following requirements to be put forward: absence of mental illness, absence of bad habits (smoking, alcohol abuse, drug consumptions, computer and gambling addiction), and excessive weight. It has been found out that the srrogacy agreement is concluded exclusively between the clients and the surrogate mother. It makes impossible to consider the medical institution to be an independent party to the agreement. At the same time, the latter is stated to provide services for the embryos/cryo-embryos preparation, the embryo’s transfer procedure to the surrogate mother uterus, as well as unused embryos cryopreservation. These services constitute the subject of a separate service agreement concluded between the customers of the mentioned services and the medical institution.