In this expert episode, I sit down with Stewart Dalley, a lawyer at Dalley Sundar who specialises in queer family formation in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Stewart has both lived and professional experience in this space: he has three daughters of his own through surrogacy, and his work has shaped the legal landscape for queer families in ways many of us have benefited from without even knowing it. Stewart and his partner were the first same-sex de facto couple in the country to obtain joint adoption orders, and he successfully argued the case that two women can both be named as mothers on their children's birth certificates.

We talk about the history of how the law in Aotearoa has treated queer families and the pathways it has opened over time. We get into the detail of donor agreements: why you should absolutely have one if you're using a personal donor, but why you also need to be really intentional about what you include, because some aspects of those agreements can in fact be enforceable by a court. We discuss what's on the horizon with surrogacy law reform, the very real pitfalls of international surrogacy, and a question Stewart is seeing come up more and more in his practice: what happens to your frozen embryos if you and your partner separate?

There is a lot in this conversation. And after we hung up, Stewart said something that stayed with me: that yes, there are still hurdles and we do need to keep advocating and agitating, but we are also lucky that a pathway exists at all. That we can be the legally recognised parents of our children and have those children in the first place. When Stewart's first daughter was born, he and his partner only had guardianship orders. He was not the legally recognised parent of his own child. That reality and the distance we've travelled from it is worth holding onto.

I hope you come away from this episode feeling like legal advice in this space is more accessible than you might think. It can start with a simple phone call. If you want to get in touch with Stewart to discuss your own situation, you can find him at Dalley Sundar Law: www.dslaw.nz

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