A British couple who used a Sri Lankan fertility clinic to create embryos for surrogacy discovered through DNA testing that neither of their twins was biologically related to the intended father. The case, decided by Mr Justice Peel in July 2026 and reported by the Guardian, exposed a dispute over what happened inside the clinic's laboratory and exposed a gap in how English family law handles cross-border surrogacy when things go wrong.

PP and QQ, originally from Sri Lanka but living in the UK since 2016, had experienced two losses. After IVF treatment in India ended with both babies dying within days of birth, doctors advised QQ against attempting pregnancy again. A family friend in Sri Lanka agreed to carry their twins through Wish Fertility, a clinic that confirmed in writing it would use donor eggs and PP's sperm to create two embryos. Both embryos were transferred to the surrogate, both took, and the twins were born.

Then came the DNA test. As part of the twins' British citizenship application, genetic testing revealed PP was not the biological father of either child. Both twins were unrelated to him. The couple withdrew their application for a parental order—the legal mechanism that would have established them as the legal parents under surrogacy law—and instead pursued adoption, which the court granted. The Home Office subsequently granted the seven-month-old twins British citizenship in March.

Wish Fertility offered two conflicting explanations for the discrepancy. First, it claimed PP and QQ had signed a consent form authorizing the use of donor sperm. The couple denied this. The clinic then shifted to a second claim: that embryologists had mixed PP's sperm with donor sperm during fertilization and that it was impossible to distinguish afterward which sample had created the implanted embryos.

Mr Justice Peel rejected both accounts. He found no evidence the couple had signed any authorization form. He noted that no one had raised concerns about the quality of PP's sperm—meaning there was no medical reason to introduce donor sperm in the first place. The clinic's claim that two sperm samples could not be told apart after the fact, he described as "startling" and "improbable." What remained unresolved was whether the substitution resulted from poor laboratory procedures or was intentional—a distinction the family court was not equipped to investigate.

The judge called PP and QQ "blameless," noting they were "desperate to bring up the children, whom they adore." QQ described the DNA result as striking "like a thunderbolt," but said the children were "meant for us."

The case sits at an important junction in English family law. A parental order under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act requires, among other things, that at least one intended parent's genetic material was used to create the embryo. When that condition cannot be met—through error, misconduct, or something unclear—adoption becomes the backup route to establish legal parentage. Adoption works, but it is slower and was never designed specifically for surrogacy. Cross-border arrangements make the problem sharper: commissioning parents have little way to verify what a foreign clinic actually did in its lab and depend entirely on documents the clinic itself produces.

The broader significance of Mr Justice Peel's judgment lies in what it leaves unanswered. English family courts are not equipped to conduct forensic laboratory investigations that would determine whether Wish Fertility's substitution was negligent or deliberate. If that question is ever answered, it will likely be pursued through Sri Lankan or Indian regulatory frameworks—which vary considerably in how closely they license and monitor fertility clinics serving overseas patients. The family court's narrower task was to secure legal parentage and citizenship for two children whose biological origins differed from what the clinic's own paperwork had stated.