UPDATES IN MICHIGAN FAMILY LAW

ERISA-based Plan not Required to Pay Surrogate's Birth-related Expenses

Is an ERISA-based employee medical benefit plan required to pay birth-related hospital expenses incurred by a surrogate mother? In an unpublished Michigan appellate decision, the answer is NO.

Facts of the case: Lehr (“surrogate mother”) became pregnant with triplets after being implanted with embryos created by third parties. Spectrum Health Hospital (Spectrum) treated the surrogate mother during her pregnancy. Third-party defendant NGS American, Inc. (NGS), the administrator of the surrogate mother’s employee medical benefit plan, denied coverage for Spectrum’s services.

Infertile Wife Held Not Parent of Husband's Surrogate Child

A New Jersey appeals court held recently in a ruling that harkens the landmark Baby M case that there is no constitutional or legal basis for recognizing an infertile wife as the mother of her husband's child born to a surrogate.  The court said it did not deny the "intrinsic societal worth, emotional appeal, and compelling logic" of granting parenthood to the infertile wife, but said adoption remains the means chosen by the Legislature to create that status. 

"Indeed, nothing in our Constitution or law provides that an adult - male or female - with no biological or gestational connection to a child has a fundamental right to create parentage by the most expeditious or convenient method possible," the court held.  The panel said its ruling, in Matter of the Parentage of a Child by T.J.S. and A.L.S., A-4784-09, flows directly from In re Baby M., 109 N.J. 396 (1988), which voided surrogacy-for-hire contracts and rejected an equal protection challenge to the New Jersey Parentage Act provision in question.