If you are seriously considering international surrogacy, your first call should be to a specialist lawyer.
We recommend Natalie Gamble and her team at Natalie Gamble Associates (www.ngalaw.co.uk).
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The laws relating to international surrogacy are complex and require genuine expertise to navigate. What follows is a very high level summary of some of the most important points, to get you started, but is not a substitute for taking your own advice.
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Surrogacy is not illegal in the UK, but it is strictly regulated. Amongst other things, it is illegal to advertise for a surrogate, to arrange surrogacy on a commercial basis or to bring a woman into the UK for the purposes of facilitating surrogacy. It is not illegal to pay a surrogate money in exchange for her providing surrogacy to you, but the amount paid must not constitute more than reasonable expenses or must others be approved by the court.
English law does not automatically recognise both of the intended parents as the parents of the baby. In fact, the surrogate will be recognised as the mother, and, if the baby is born in the UK, will appear as such on the baby's birth certificate. If the surrogate is married her husband will be recognised as the father (notwithstanding his lack of genetic involvement). If not, the real father (i.e. one half of the intended parents) will be recognised as the father. All of this can be sorted out at the High Court after the birth (see the UK Court Process section) but it does create some uncertainty and there have been (mercifully only a few) cases in which the surrogate has refused to relinquish the baby after birth and the intended parents have had to endure contentious proceedings to establish that they should have custody. In those cases the court makes its decision based on the interests of the child rather than the "rights" of the intended parents. Surrogacy agreements are not legally enforceable in the UK.
By contrast, the law in some of the states in the USA is more liberal. We entered into a "Gestational Carrier Agreement" with our surrogate and her husband which was governed by the law of the state of Illinois and which was legally enforceable. We were able, before the birth, to apply for and obtain an order from the court in North Carolina (the state in which our surrogate was resident) which recognised us as the parents of the as yet unborn baby. As a consequence, days after the birth we were issued with a birth certificate which named us as the parents (and which enabled us to apply for and obtain a US passport in order to bring Emily home).
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There are other countries in which international surrogacy is possible. When we embarked on our process Ukraine, Georgia and India were all possibilities, though each presented risks which made them comparatively unappealing. Many couples now make arrangements in Mexico. Undoubtedly there are countries in which such things can be done more cheaply, and perhaps also a little more quickly, than in the United States. But the combination of legal certainty and judicial impartiality, access to high quality (indeed cutting edge) medical professionals, experience of successful surrogacy, processes, use of English language and cultural similarity make the US a very attractive destination.