Actress and former talk-show personality Sherri Shepherd is asking Pennsylvania’s top court to overturn a lower-court ruling that validated gestational-surrogacy contracts, which was a boon for many same-sex parents.
Shepherd, who co-hosted “The View” from 2007-14, has been locked in a legal dispute with ex-husband Lamar Sally over parenting rights of their son, born through a surrogate.
After experiencing fertility problems, Shepherd and Sally entered into a gestational-surrgocacy contract with a Pennsylvania carrier while they were still a couple. They split up during the pregnancy, and Shepherd has since sought to remove herself as the child’s mother from legal documents. She argued that the surrogate instead should be considered the boy’s mother.
In November, the Pennsylvania Superior Court upheld a lower-court ruling that found that surrogacy agreements such as the one Shepherd and Sally entered into are enforceable; such documents typically address who the intended parents are, the surrogate’s payment and health-insurance costs and any contingency plans if issues arise.
It was the first appellate decision in Pennsylvania to validate gestational-surrogacy contracts, which is especially important as the state lacks any statutes governing assisted-reproductive rights.
“The only law we really have that gives lawyers guidance on this issue is case law,” Tiffany Palmer, partner at Jerner & Palmer, P.C., who represented Sally, told PGN at the time. “And up until this point, there was very little case law at all on the issue of surrogacy.”
The appellate-court ruling validated a May finding by Montgomery County Orphans’ Court Judge Stanley Ott, who ruled that the contract Shepherd signed is enforceable, and that she, not the surrogate, is the child’s mother. At that time, Shepherd became responsible for child-support payments.
Shepherd now has to wait for the state Supreme Court to decide if it will hear the case.