Commercial surrogacy — paying someone else to carry and give birth to your child — is banned in the UK, but available overseas. That allows couples and individuals who would otherwise be unable to have children to experience the miracle of life with the aid of a third party.

It’s a fraught process, and getting the resulting baby a visa may not be at the forefront of the intended parents’ minds. It may, however, be necessary. A child born to a surrogate abroad will not be automatically entitled to come straight back to the UK, even if the intended parents are both British themselves. It depends on who the child’s legal parents are at the point of birth and what nationality that leaves the child with. The child may be British, or entitled to be registered as British, or entitled to the passport of the country of birth, or able to get entry clearance under a special surrogacy policy, or…

Enter Karma Hickman, who has seen her share of complicated surrogacy cases and disentangled the nationality and immigration law issues. In this podcast we review three of Karma’s past international surrogacy cases — names have been changed and all the rest of it — and work out the family’s options in each case. The scenarios are the same as in Karma’s article Surrogacy, citizenship and immigration: common problem scenarios, published yesterday.