Surrogacy laws
The Surrogacy Act 2010 regulates surrogacy arrangements in Queensland, including transferring the parentage of a child born as a result of a surrogacy arrangement.
What’s legal and what’s not
Under the Surrogacy Act, you can:
- enter into a non-commercial surrogacy arrangement—no money changes hands
- pay or reimburse the birth mother’s reasonable surrogacy costs.
Under the Surrogacy Act, you can't:
- enter into a commercial surrogacy arrangement—where one party pays another
- advertise for any surrogacy arrangement—whether you are willing to be the birth mother or looking for someone to be a birth mother for you
- receive any fees for arranging a surrogacy.
The birth mother’s rights
As the birth mother, you have the right to manage your pregnancy as any other pregnant woman, despite what you have agreed to in the surrogacy arrangement.
A female partner in a same sex relationship will be presumed to be the parent of the child when a baby was conceived by assisted reproduction technology.
You must register the birth of the child with the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. You and the other birth parent (if any, do not include an intended parent) will appear on the certificate as the child’s parent(s) until the intended parent(s):
- get an order from the court to transfer the child’s parentage
- register the parentage order with the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.