How US Parents Registered Surrogacy-Born Twins as Israeli Citizens

Result: Twin children registered as Israeli citizens from birth and issued Israeli passports · Timeline: 11 months from birth to passports in hand · Challenge: Foreign parentage order carries no weight in Israel · Authority: Tel Aviv Family Court and the Population and Immigration Authority · Financial Impact: NIS 39,000 in Israeli court, testing and legal costs

Background

The father called us three weeks after the consulate wrote back, and the letter he read out was four lines long. He and his wife were both born in Israel, both hold Israeli passports, and both had been living in New Jersey for twelve years. Their twins were born in Ohio in March 2025 through gestational surrogacy, using his sperm and a donor egg. An Ohio court had issued a pre-birth parentage order, and both spouses appeared as parents on both birth certificates.

They did the sensible thing and filed at the Israeli Consulate General in New York inside the thirty-day window, expecting the registration to be routine. It was not. What was at stake was not sentiment. The family had a written plan to move back to Israel within three years, and two children with no Israeli status would have arrived as foreign nationals needing visas in a country where their parents are citizens.

The Challenge

Israel's rule on citizenship by descent sits in Section 4(a)(2) of the Nationality Law 1952. A person born outside Israel is an Israeli citizen from birth if one parent was an Israeli citizen who acquired that citizenship by return, by residence in Israel, by naturalisation, by adoption, or by birth in Israel under Section 4(a)(1). Both parents cleared that test comfortably. The word the section turns on is parent, and that is precisely where surrogacy files stop moving.

The Population and Immigration Authority does not accept a foreign birth certificate or a foreign pre-birth parentage order as proof of the legal parentage Israeli law recognises. Where a woman other than the registered mother carried and delivered the child, the registry department asks for evidence of a genetic link to the Israeli parent claiming citizenship for the child. This is not hostility to surrogacy. Under Section 3 of the Population Registry Law 1965 the register is prima facie evidence of the details it holds, and an entry made on thin material is hard to unmake later. The authority is protecting the evidential weight of its own record.

Then came the second wall, and it is the one that surprises American families most. The proof the authority wants is a genetic test, and a genetic test to establish family relationships cannot simply be booked at a commercial laboratory. Section 28A of the Genetic Information Law 2000 permits such testing only under an order of an Israeli Family Court. Section 28B governs consent, and where the subjects are minors their guardians give it. The Attorney General is joined as a respondent in the proceeding. A couple living outside Israel, whose newborn children had never set foot in the country, needed an open court file in Tel Aviv before a swab could lawfully be taken in Manhattan.

In Practice: Under Section 28A of the Genetic Information Law 2000, a genetic test to prove family relationships may be carried out only under an order of a Family Court, and Section 28G(c) requires the analysis to be performed at a laboratory recognised in Israel unless no Israeli facility can run it. Filing a declaratory parentage claim in the Family Court costs NIS 432 under the Family Court (Fees) Regulations 1995 for a claim not sounding in a fixed sum, and the testing order in an uncontested file typically issues 8 to 10 weeks after filing once the Attorney General's representative has responded. Nothing at the consulate can be done before that order exists.

What We Did

We opened a declaratory paternity claim in the Tel Aviv Family Court in June 2025, joined to an application for a testing order, with the Attorney General as respondent. The claim was drafted around the father alone. That was a deliberate choice, and it is worth explaining, because the instinct of most parents is to ask the court to declare both of them.

Israel does have a route for the non-genetic spouse: the judicial parentage order, tzav horut psikati, which recognises the partner of a biological parent as a full legal parent without an adoption process. The Attorney General's published position is that the state will support such an application only where the applicants are residents of Israel, meaning citizens or permanent residents who have lived in the country for at least three of the five years before filing, or twelve of the eighteen months before filing. This couple had lived in New Jersey for twelve years. They met neither threshold, and an application would have drawn a state objection and put the whole file at risk of delay.

We also checked whether waiting would cost them anything. In BEM 4880/18 the Supreme Court held in February 2020 that a judicial parentage order operates from the date it is given rather than retroactively to birth. Since the order cannot reach back in any event, deferring the mother's application until the family relocates costs the children nothing they would otherwise have had.

The sequence from there ran as follows.

1. June 2025: claim filed. Declaratory paternity claim plus testing application, supported by the surrogacy agreement, the Ohio pre-birth order, both birth certificates and the fertility clinic's records. Because the Ohio documents are in English, no notarial Hebrew translation was required. Had the children been born in a country whose civil records are issued in another language, each document would have needed a notarial translation, running roughly NIS 251 for a short civil-status document under the fee scale in the Notaries Regulations 1977.
2. August 2025: testing order granted. The court ordered a three-way panel covering the father and both children, with sampling to be supervised by an Israeli consular official and the analysis performed at a laboratory recognised by the Ministry of Health.
3. September 2025: sampling in New York. The father attended the consulate with both infants. Consular staff verified identity against passports, took buccal samples using the sealed kit supplied for the purpose, sealed and documented the chain of custody, and couriered the kit to the Israeli laboratory. Neither the family nor our office ever handled the samples, which is the whole point of the exercise.
4. October 2025: results to the court. The laboratory sent its report under seal directly to the judge. We received it only when the court released it to the parties.
5. November 2025: declaratory judgment. The court declared the father the biological and legal father of both children.

With the judgment in hand we returned to the consulate. The registration application under Section 11 of the Population Registry Law 1965 was refiled, this time with a document the registry department could act on, and the Population and Immigration Authority registered both children as Israeli citizens from the date of birth under Section 4(a)(2) of the Nationality Law 1952. Israeli identity numbers followed in January 2026, and the first passports for both minors were issued in February.

In Practice: Section 11 of the Population Registry Law 1965 obliges a resident whose child is born abroad to report the birth details to a registration clerk within thirty days, and a first Israeli passport for a minor costs NIS 155 at a Population Authority office in Israel, with consular missions charging the equivalent in local currency. Missing the thirty-day window does not forfeit the child's citizenship under Section 4(a)(2) of the Nationality Law 1952, but it does move the file from routine processing into the discretionary queue, where the Population and Immigration Authority routinely asks for the kind of corroboration that adds 3 to 6 months. File inside the window even when you already know the registration will be refused, because the dated filing is what keeps the file in the ordinary track.

The Outcome

Both children hold Israeli citizenship from the date of their birth, Israeli identity numbers, and Israeli passports. The whole matter ran eleven months from birth, of which the court stage accounted for five. Total Israeli cost came to roughly NIS 39,000, covering the court fee, the laboratory panel, consular charges and our fees. The alternative the family had been quietly contemplating, moving to Israel and applying for the children's status from inside the country, would have meant entering on visitor visas with two infants and negotiating with the Ministry of Interior from a much weaker position.

The mother's status remains open, and the family understood that from the first meeting. She is not recorded as a parent of the twins in the Israeli register, and she cannot be until they satisfy the residency threshold the Attorney General applies to judicial parentage orders. In practical terms this means the father alone signs for the children in Israeli consular and administrative matters. To cover the risk of something happening to him before the family relocates, we prepared Israeli-law wills for both spouses with a guardianship designation for the twins, which the Family Court would weigh heavily if it ever had to appoint a guardian. That is a workaround rather than a solution, and we said so plainly.

Key Takeaways

What this case illustrates for non-residents in similar situations:

1. A foreign pre-birth parentage order and a foreign birth certificate naming both intended parents will not, on their own, produce Israeli citizenship for a child born through surrogacy. Budget for an Israeli Family Court file from the outset rather than treating it as a fallback.
2. Genetic testing to prove family ties is lawful in Israel only under a Family Court order, so the court file must open before any sample is taken. A test arranged privately at home before consulting an Israeli lawyer is wasted money, because the registry department will not rely on it.
3. Report the birth at an Israeli mission within the thirty days set by Section 11 of the Population Registry Law 1965 even when you expect a refusal. The dated filing keeps the matter in the ordinary processing track and is evidence of good faith later.
4. Where only one parent is genetically related and the family lives abroad, expect the genetic parent's status to be resolved and the other parent's to be deferred. The Attorney General's residency threshold for judicial parentage orders, three of five years or twelve of eighteen months in Israel, is applied strictly, and the Supreme Court has confirmed such orders are not retroactive.
5. Cover the gap while it lasts. Israeli-law wills with a guardianship designation, and a clear record of the non-genetic parent's role from birth, cost very little to put in place and matter a great deal if the family's plans change.

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Facing a Similar Situation?

If you are an Israeli citizen living abroad and your child was born through surrogacy, donor conception, or any arrangement where the birth mother is not the registered mother, expect the Israeli registration to require more than the local paperwork you already hold. The same is true where a consulate has already refused a file. Our guide to Israeli citizenship for children born abroad covers the ordinary route, and the overview of Israeli dual citizenship rights and obligations sets out what the status carries with it.

Contact us for a confidential consultation about your Israeli legal matter.