Who Is a Parent Under a Texas Surrogacy Agreement? What the Dallas Case and Chapter 160 Actually Say

What Changed, and When

The child at the center of the case was born in Dallas on August 12, 2026, carried by McKenna West, a gestational carrier from Alaska, for a California couple, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, whose embryo it was. Before the birth the relationship between the carrier and the intended parents broke down over who would make medical decisions for a child diagnosed in April with a severe heart defect. West traveled to Texas and filed suit in Dallas seeking sole conservatorship — the Texas term for legal custody — so that she, rather than the intended parents, would direct his care.

On September 2, 2026, state District Judge Ashley Wysocki ruled against West and dismissed her as a party. The order itself is not public: a clerk for the judge told The Texas Tribune that the entire trial court case has been sealed. What is known about the reasoning comes from West’s own subsequent filing, which describes the Dallas court as enforcing an earlier California judgment that had upheld Gilkar and Ahmed’s parental rights. On September 9, 2026, West’s attorneys filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court, No. 26A325, asking it to preserve the status quo.

On Thursday, September 17, 2026, the Supreme Court of Texas denied West’s request to keep the child in Texas, clearing the way for his parents to move him to a Los Angeles hospital. According to The Texas Tribune, which reported the ruling, the court wrote that “sustaining the life of the medically fragile child is the paramount concern in this time-sensitive matter,” citing what it described as uncontroverted testimony from the child’s Texas physician that an intensive-care-to-intensive-care transfer was in the child’s best interest. Briefs filed with the court by the child’s court-appointed guardian ad litem and by the parents’ lawyers are on the court’s public media search. As of the date on this page we have not located a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the separate emergency application.

Who in Texas This Reaches

Directly, the case reaches one family. Indirectly, it reaches a much larger group of Texans who have a gestational agreement in a drawer, are negotiating one, or are being asked to carry a pregnancy for someone else: intended parents using in vitro fertilization, gestational carriers and their spouses, the fertility clinics and agencies that arrange the matches, and the hospitals that have to decide whose consent to rely on when a newborn needs treatment.

It also reaches people whose arrangement crosses state lines, which is common. In this dispute the carrier lived in Alaska, the intended parents lived in California, and the birth happened in Texas. Each of those states has its own law on who a child’s parents are, and the question of which state’s order governs is not academic — by the reported account it was the deciding issue in the Dallas courtroom.

What This Changes Legally

The Texas Supreme Court’s September 17 action was an emergency ruling about where a specific child could be treated. It did not rewrite Texas surrogacy law. The law it sits on top of is Subchapter I of Chapter 160 of the Texas Family Code, and these are its load-bearing parts.

A Texas gestational agreement has entry requirements. Under Section 160.754, the intended parents must be married to each other and each must be a party to the agreement; the eggs used must come from an intended parent or a donor, and the gestational mother’s own eggs may not be used; and the agreement must be entered into before the embryo transfer.

The agreement is validated by a court, not by signatures. Sections 160.755 and 160.756 set up a petition and a hearing. A court may validate the agreement only if it finds, among other things, that the parties submitted to the court’s jurisdiction, that medical evidence shows the intended mother cannot carry a pregnancy to term without unreasonable risk, that a home study found the intended parents meet the fitness standards applied to adoptive parents unless the court waives it, that every party entered the agreement voluntarily and understands its terms, that the prospective gestational mother has had at least one previous pregnancy and delivery, and that the parties have provided for who pays the pregnancy’s health care costs. There is also a residency requirement tied to Texas.

An unvalidated agreement is a different legal object entirely. Section 160.762 states that a gestational agreement that was not validated under the subchapter is unenforceable, and that parentage for a child born under it is determined the way Chapter 160 determines parentage generally — not by what the contract says. The same section provides that an intended parent under an unvalidated agreement may still be held liable for the child’s support, and allows a court to assess filing fees, reasonable attorney’s fees, genetic testing fees, travel and other reasonable expenses. In other words, an unvalidated agreement can fail to give someone the rights they bargained for while still leaving them with obligations.

An out-of-state parentage judgment is its own question. When a valid judgment from another state already establishes who a child’s parents are, a Texas court is generally being asked to give it effect rather than to decide parentage from scratch. Texas also has the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, Chapter 152 of the Family Code, which governs which state’s courts may hear a custody matter and when a Texas court may act on a temporary emergency basis. How those rules apply to any particular arrangement depends on the orders, the dates and the residences involved, which is squarely lawyer work.

The statute could change. The Texas Tribune reports that the case has drawn the attention of state lawmakers, and that proposals to restrict surrogacy are expected when the Legislature next meets in regular session in 2027. Nothing has been filed or enacted; the law described above is the law in effect today.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here says what any particular agreement means or how any particular dispute should come out. What a Texas family law attorney can review, on the actual documents, includes:

• Whether an existing gestational agreement was validated by a court before the embryo transfer, and what the order says if one exists.
• What Chapter 160 does with an agreement that was never validated, and what that means for parentage, support obligations and costs.
• Which state’s law and which state’s courts govern when the carrier, the intended parents and the hospital are in different states.
• How medical decision-making authority is documented before a birth, and what a hospital is likely to rely on in an emergency.
• What the agreement says about disagreements during the pregnancy, what a Texas court can and cannot enforce from that language, and where the limits are.
• What steps follow a birth to confirm parentage on the record and on the birth certificate.
• Whether a dispute that has already started belongs in family court, and what a suit affecting the parent-child relationship involves.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

The sequencing in Subchapter I is not decorative. The agreement has to be entered before the embryo transfer, and the validation hearing is designed to happen before a child exists. A family that discovers after a birth that no Texas court ever validated the agreement is no longer choosing between options; it is litigating parentage under whatever the general rules produce, often while a newborn needs care and decisions. The Dallas case shows how fast that can move: a birth on August 12, a trial court ruling on September 2, a filing at the U.S. Supreme Court on September 9, and a Texas Supreme Court ruling on September 17. Five weeks, three courts. Having a lawyer read the paperwork before there is a deadline is a materially different situation from finding one after the deadline has passed.

Sources

1. Texas Legislature, Texas Family Code Chapter 160, Uniform Parentage Act, Subchapter I — Gestational Agreements, Sections 160.751 through 160.763 (primary document).
2. Supreme Court of the United States, Emergency Application for Stay, No. 26A325, filed September 9, 2026 (primary document; a filing by one party, and its characterizations are that party’s own).
3. Supreme Court of Texas, brief of the guardian ad litem and brief of the intended parents, September 2026 (primary documents).
4. The Texas Tribune (Terri Langford), “Texas Supreme Court rules baby delivered by surrogate can leave Texas,” September 18, 2026 (source of the quoted language from the court’s ruling).
5. The Texas Tribune (Terri Langford), “Texas judge: Alaskan surrogate does not have custody over child she birthed in Dallas,” September 10, 2026.
6. KSAT 12 San Antonio, “Texas Supreme Court rules baby delivered by surrogate can leave Texas,” September 18, 2026.
7. WFAA Dallas, “Texas Supreme Court rules baby delivered by surrogate can leave Texas,” September 18, 2026.
8. The Associated Press, coverage of the August 2026 Dallas hearing.