Judge Rules Sherri Shepherd Is The Legal Mother Of Baby Born Via Surrogate

The wacky, wailing ride of Sherri Shepherd‘s horrible maternity case has come to an end this week, with a Pennsylvania. judge ruling that Shepherd is the legal mother of the baby she and her then-husband had via surrogate.

Shepherd’s story is bizarre and appalling. According to People, it all started when Shepherd and her then-husband Lamar Sally decided to have a baby together. They reportedly used a donor egg, Sally’s sperm, and a surrogate. The surrogate did not provide the egg. Later, as the couple split up, Sally says Shepherd had a drastic change of heart and decided she did not want a baby anymore, but the surrogate was already pregnant and several months along at that point.

Shepherd maintains that she was tricked into having the child with Sally, and that the whole thing was a ploy by Sally to get more money out of her.

Shepherd and Sally have been fighting a messy legal battle over the infant’s maternity ever since. Shepherd was not at the infant’s birth in August, so the surrogate’s name was listed on the baby’s birth certificate, despite the fact that the surrogate was not genetically related to the infant and had only been hired to carry and deliver the child. At one point, the state of California reportedly even came after the surrogate to pay child support, because she was the mother of record.

But now a judge says Shepherd is the legal mother of the infant, eight-month-old Lamar Sally Jr., and her name will be listed on his birth certificate. Presumably she will now be responsible for child support, but that will be a whole different legal battle between Shepherd and Sally.

This whole story is appalling. Shepherd lost the battle, but the war is presumably far from over, and the person who has it worst in all this is the baby.

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