When Tammy and Jordan Myers’ twins Eames and Ellison Myers turned 2 years old on Jan. 11, they were surrounded by loved ones (including their big sister Corryn, 10), friends and gifts.
“We now have the family I have been dreaming about my entire life,” Tammy, 41, exclusively tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.
But getting to this point took a lengthy legal battle. Due to Michigan’s surrogacy laws, the couple needed to adopt their own biological children, who were born via a gestational carrier in 2021, even though Tammy and Jordan had been raising the twins since birth and their surrogate (who also serves as their godmother) was completely supportive. Now Tammy and Jordan, 39, hope that sharing their experience will lead to a policy change.
Their journey began with Tammy’s breast cancer diagnosis in 2015. Told that her treatment and a partial hysterectomy would prevent her from carrying more children, she worried that she would never be able to give her daughter Corryn siblings and have the big family she and Jordan longed for.
“Doctors told me that the only way that we could grow our family would be to do an emergency egg harvest,” says Tammy, who went through with the process and only began to explore surrogacy options once her cancer was in remission.
Tammy and Jordan had prepared for the surrogacy process with the help of their family law attorney, Melissa Neckers, who explained how Michigan’s 1988 Surrogate Parenting Act says any agreement between parties won’t be recognized in court. She proposed two common workarounds: A “pre-birth order,” requiring a judge’s sign-off, could name Tammy and Jordan as parents before the delivery; or the court could be petitioned to award Jordan paternal rights, although Tammy would still have to adopt as a stepparent, because she wouldn’t be carrying the fetus herself.
“Given that over 80 families have done this exact same thing with no trouble,” Tammy says, “we were more worried about the cost.”
In a vulnerable Facebook post, Tammy explained that she’d always dreamt of having a big family and was looking for a surrogate. She also addressed the state-required hoops — including how compensated surrogacy was illegal in Michigan — but wrote, “it is 100% legal if you are willing to do so as an incredible blessing and gift.”
Married mom-of-two Lauren Vermilye, then 34, replied within 15 minutes, writing that while she and her husband were “definitely set with our family,” she felt called to assist another. “This is very new to me but if I can help, I would be honored,” Lauren wrote. Her words, says Tammy, “captivated our hearts.”
