Entertainment

Sorry Sherri Shepherd, But You Can’t Renege Your Baby’s Surrogacy

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A Pennsylvania appeals court has found television personality Sherri Shepherd legally responsible for a child born to a surrogate that she and her ex-husband hired before they divorced. According to USA Today, the former actress must now continue to pay $4,100 a month in child support to her ex-husband Lamar Sally for little Lamar Jr.

The couple separated in May 2014, but before they split they had already hired a surrogate to have their baby using Sally’s sperm and an egg donor. It was during the surrogate’s second trimester that Shepherd voiced she’d had a change of heart due to her struggling marriage, despite already paying more than $100,000 for the woman to carry the child.

But seeing as the surrogate was already pregnant, there was no going back. The woman eventually gave birth to the child in August, and Sally, who paid an additional $5,000 toward the surrogate’s cost, was awarded full custody. Yet the writer and substitute teacher still believed Shepherd, who has no DNA link to the baby, should financially support the child.

To make things even more complicated the surrogate was named as Lamar Jr.’s mother on the birth certificate, before it was changed to list Shepherd. The former View host had sought to have her name removed from the new birth certificate and have her surrogacy contract voided before the judge ruled against her.

Either way you look at it, this case is pretty sad. No one likes to hear that someone doesn’t want a baby, but the fact that Shepherd has no biological ties to the child makes this case even more interesting. Ultimately it just goes to show you that once you sign the contract, the baby is yours.

In April, “Modern Family” actress Sofia Vergara suffered similar surrogacy scrutiny after her former fiancé Nick Loeb petitioned the courts to save Vergara’s frozen embryos fertilized with his sperm, so that he could one day use a surrogate to birth them. Many found the matter, which still isn’t resolved, to be creepy, but it just goes to show you that we’re still trying to iron out the legal and moral intricacies of this non-conventional birthing method as it becomes more and more popular.

Hopefully in the case of Shepherd and Sally, the pair can put their differences aside for sake of the baby.

Alexis Evans
Alexis Evans
Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.
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