Fertility and assisted reproduction solicitors

Assisted reproduction involves detailed legal and regulatory requirements. Decisions made during treatment can also have long-term consequences. Specialist legal advice helps ensure consent is valid, risks are understood and outcomes reflect your intentions. Our solicitors have specific experience in fertility law and can provide you with clear, practical guidance throughout the process.

Legal advice is often most valuable at the planning stage, before treatment begins, and at key points where circumstances change. Early advice can help identify risks around consent, legal parentage and future decision-making, reducing the likelihood of disputes or unintended consequences later on.

Disputes can arise if relationships change, consent is withdrawn, or expectations about the future use of embryos or gametes differ. The law places significant weight on formal consent rather than intention, which can lead to unexpected outcomes. Our solicitors can help you understand how these situations are approached and how any disagreement may be resolved.

Fertility treatment can affect who is legally recognised as a parent and how family arrangements are structured, particularly where donor conception, surrogacy or separation is involved. Our solicitors can advise you on how fertility law interacts with wider family law to ensure legal parentage and responsibilities are clearly established.

Before treatment can proceed, your chosen fertility clinic will likely ask you to consent to the following:

• The identity of the legal parents of the child
• The use and storage of your eggs, sperm or embryos (including what happens if you don’t use them)
• The handling of your eggs, sperm or embryos in the event that you or your partner pass away during the course of treatment
• How your personal information will be used

Understanding what you’re consenting to and the associated issues is critical. You’re also legally entitled to withdraw consent at any time.

Should either you or your partner withdraw your consent, our specialist fertility solicitors can help you understand what it means for your treatment and/or stored embryos or gametes and resolve your dispute in the least confrontational way possible.

If you have stored eggs, sperm or embryos, you may wish to bring them into the UK (import) or move them to another country (export). For example, you may be moving to or from the UK, using a donor or surrogate from another country, or choosing to have fertility treatment overseas.

Strict requirements must be met before UK clinics will allow stored eggs, sperm or embryos to be moved across borders, to or from their care – and other countries will have their own rules. Our assisted reproduction solicitors can give expert legal advice on importing and exporting your gametes or embryos to make the process as painless as possible.

Posthumous conception is when you use the eggs or sperm of somebody who has passed away to conceive. Generally, this is only possible when the deceased person gave consent before their death.

In rare cases, it is possible to collect and use eggs, sperm or embryos of somebody who has died without their consent. These cases are looked at on an individual basis.

Our specialist solicitors can provide you with sensitive advice about your legal position if you’re considering posthumous conception.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is a government regulatory body that ensures UK fertility clinics and research centres comply with the law. The regulations in fertility law are complex and there are many ethical considerations.

Our fertility solicitors can help you understand and navigate the regulations so that you’re clear on what options are available to you, the ethical boundaries, and what your position is throughout the process.