The Nature of Surrogacy Agreement in Pregnancy According to the Iranian Legal System

In the legal system of Iran every contract has a specific nature, the explanation of which, has a significant role in exact understanding of it, including conclusion, termination and the resulting right and obligations. A contract is either mentioned in laws, and its conditions, rules and effects are explained there, or it accepted according to the principle of freedom of contract, there by its conclusion, in compliance with general legal rules, is completely dependent on mutual agreement of the involved parties. The Surrogacy contract for pregnancy is also an agreement to transfer the concepted egg of an unfertile couple to another woman's woman in order to keep it alive and let it grow there and then delivering the neonate to the donors of sperm and egg. The nature of this contract, considering the fact of its being a novelty and nonexistence of legislation in this regard, should be discussed. Some have regarded it as a new legal concept to be analyzed using current legal formats such as rent and deposit and others consider it an undetermined contract governed by the Article 10 of the Iranian Civil Law. The present study has tried to explain and criticize these points of view.