Vorzimer/ Masserman - Fertility & Family Law Center

Dean E. Masserman and Andrew W. Vorzimer founded their firm in 1994, at a time when there was little in case law or on the books to guide those interested in gestational surrogacy.

The pair had planned to open a general practice when they rented an office in Beverly Hills in a building where attorney and local talk radio personality William W. "Bill" Handel ran his Center for Surrogate Parenting. "He had an agency that matched infertile individuals with women who would carry their babies," Masserman said. "He came to us because he needed us to write contracts and get parental rights for the intended parents."

Intrigued, Masserman and Vorzimer went to work. They found a wide open field. "This was uncharted territory, the wild, wild West," Masserman said. "There was no legislation. Commercial surrogacy was illegal in many states and overseas, though not in California. We began to get parental rights for clients through various means, chiefly via the step-parent adoption process."

A breakthrough came in 1998 when a state appellate panel ruled that a couple who hired a surrogate mother to bear them a child is legally the child's parents despite having contributed neither egg nor sperm. The case arose from the couple's divorce and the father's refusal to pay child support. In re Marriage of Buzzanca, 61 Cal.App.4th 1412 (4th DCA, opinion filed March 10, 1988). Masserman and Vorzimer weren't involved in the litigation, but they quickly saw its implications.

"We interpreted it to mean that if there was a valid contract, there was legal parenthood. We could streamline things and avoid the long and arduous adoption process," Masserman said. He explained that theory to a sympathetic judge who agreed to issue a judgment of parenthood in the case before the baby was born. "There were balloons in her chambers," he said. "It was the first time a pre-birth order had ever been issued, and we became pioneers of this legal niche."

Vorzimer had been interested in the field since his law school days in the 1980s, when in vitro fertilization became a hot topic nationally. He wrote an early law review article on the constitutional implications of the new science. After teaming up with Masserman, the men became part of a small group of attorneys who assisted state Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes in drafting the law that in 2012 became Family Code section 7962. It provides statutory authority for gestational surrogacy arrangements in California.

The basic rule is that one who causes the conception of a child through assisted reproduction shall be deemed the parent of the child. The surrogate shall have no parental responsibilities or rights regarding the child.

Meanwhile, Vorzimer and Masserman grew their firm into a five-attorney practice that has represented more than 23,000 clients across the U.S. and from more than 36 other countries in cases involving surrogacy, egg donation, embryo donation, sperm donation and embryo dispute litigation. Their clients have included Kim Kardashian West, Elton John, Kanye West, Dewayne Wade, Gabrielle Union, Angela Bassett, Courtney B. Vance and Elizabeth Banks along with other entertainment and sports celebrities, politicians, attorneys, judges and many others, the law partners said.

A case that focused many of the issues involved in the surrogacy field arose when a surrogate implanted with three embryos refused to abort one of them, despite the wishes of the father and medical experts, and sought to be declared the legal parent. Backed by anti-abortion advocates, the surrogate, Melissa Kay Cook, sued in state court in California, where the children were born, and in Georgia, where the father resided, and in federal court. The suits attacked California's surrogacy statute on constitutional due process and equal protection grounds. Vorzimer and Masserman were retained to defend the interests of the hospital where the children were born. Cook v. Brown, 2:16-cv-00742 (C.D. Cal., filed Feb. 2, 2016).

The father prevailed in every suit and the U.S. Supreme Court denied review. "The case epitomized the best and worst of the field and underlined the need for more regulation and a stronger focus on the ethics involved," said Vorzimer, who criticized the triple implant procedure and the mismatch between the beliefs of the father and the surrogate. "The opposite outcome could have been a death sentence for our progressive surrogacy laws."

-- John Roemer