Allan and Bri prepared a birthday gift basket for the twins before their third birthday on November 3, packing it with favorite toys, books and a dress for the little girl who adored playing dress-up.
But the foster parents, whose names have been changed to shield the children’s identities, did not know whether the twins would ever receive the presents.
The toddlers had been removed in September from the only home they had known and placed with a wealthy retired couple in New York at the heart of a highly unusual surrogacy dispute.
In 2023, MaryBeth Lewis, 69, who was already raising 13 other children, allegedly forged her husband’s signature on surrogacy documents to have twins born from donor embryos without his permission.
Bob Lewis, 70, reported his wife to authorities. The twins were placed with Allan and Bri as newborns that November while MaryBeth faced roughly 30 criminal charges.
For almost three years, Allan and Bri raised the children as their own. That changed after Bob withdrew the allegations and a judge determined that the Lewises were the twins’ legal parents.
Allan and Bri launched a desperate legal appeal but ultimately lost. This year, they were ordered to surrender the children.
Now speaking publicly for the first time, the heartbroken foster parents told the Daily Mail about losing the twins they had welcomed into their home as newborns.
‘From the moment we saw them in the hospital until the minute we had to hand them over, they were our kids. We loved them unconditionally,’ Bri said.
MaryBeth and Bob Lewis already had 13 biological children together when the twins were born in 2023
Bob and MaryBeth are shown with seven young members of their family. MaryBeth gave birth to a daughter in 2020 at age 62 and has been accused of secretly arranging another pregnancy through a surrogate three years later
Allan, an engineer, and Bri, a stay-at-home mother, had fostered children for more than a decade when they received a call about newborn twins in November 2023.
They reached the hospital within an hour. The couple, both 40, said they had hoped to eventually adopt the twins, who quickly became part of the family alongside their teenage biological sons.
The older boys taught the twins to play tag and carried them on their backs. Allan also installed a small basketball hoop for the twin boy, who was eager to imitate his brothers.
‘Our boys play lacrosse, and he loved grabbing their sticks, putting on a lacrosse helmet and pretending he was going out to play catch with them,’ Allan said.
The twins’ absence has also been ‘hard on them too,’ Allan said of his sons.
Bri said motherhood with the twins had become a cherished part of her life, from taking them on long walks to bringing them along to farmers markets.
‘We were there for everything. We never missed a beat. They lived in a home where they were completely cherished, and everyone here loves them so much,’ she said.
The couple said the family’s final hours with the twins before the transfer were excruciating.
Allan and Bri said the twins were deeply loved by them and their biological children
One of the twins’ training bikes remains unused at Allan and Bri’s home
The family is now considering its legal options with attorney Bob Flores.
‘The central question is how the court reached its decision if it was truly considering what would be in the child’s best interests,’ he said.
The dispute over the twins began before they were born.
Bob learned about eight weeks before the twins’ due date that his wife had arranged for a surrogate to carry them in September 2023. He discovered it when a court order identifying the couple as the parents arrived by mail.
MaryBeth, a former OBGYN nurse who had given birth to her last biological child at 62, allegedly persuaded an IVF clinic to transfer two remaining embryos to a surrogate without Bob’s knowledge, the New York Times reported.
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The embryos had been created using donor eggs and donor sperm.
She acknowledged to the newspaper that she signed Bob’s name to the surrogacy agreement in February 2023. During a September court hearing held over Zoom, she said she entered a separate account in his name, kept the camera turned off and responded to the judge with grunts.
The allegations included attempted kidnapping, a charge later dismissed. Steuben County District Attorney Brooks Baker described it to the Daily Mail as ‘a novel charge.’
A temporary protection order issued in 2023 prohibited both Lewises from contacting the twins. According to the newspaper, MaryBeth returned from the hospital with two empty car seats.
Bob Lewis after his wife was charged with allegedly lying to arrange for a surrogate to carry twins when she was 68. The charges were later reduced
MaryBeth told the Daily Mail she was the victim of a corrupt court system and vowed to regain custody of the children
Bob later changed course, saying he feared that reporting his wife could fracture their family and leave them buried under crippling legal expenses.
According to the Times, he told a social services investigator that he and MaryBeth had agreed to raise the twins together in order to preserve their family.
The couple subsequently signed a new agreement with the surrogate. This version carried Bob’s genuine signature and confirmed that they intended to become the children’s parents.
On October 20, 2025, Judge Mathew K. McCarthy ruled that MaryBeth and Bob were the twins’ rightful parents, restoring the status granted before the alleged fraud became known, according to court documents.
Three days later, MaryBeth’s criminal case was reduced to three misdemeanors after Bob testified on her behalf, SCDA Baker told the Daily Mail.
Bob said he had been comfortable with his wife representing him during the surrogacy proceedings and had not intended to report her, according to District Attorney Baker.
MaryBeth pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of attempting to offer a false instrument for filing. She was ordered to pay a $250 fine and register with the New York State DNA Registry.
The court ordered the children placed in the Lewises’ custody, but attorneys for Allan and Bri sought a stay from an appellate court, postponing the handover.
Speaking to the Daily Mail several weeks after the October ruling, MaryBeth alleged that the children had been taken unlawfully.
‘I have children out there and I want them back,’ she said. ‘They were essentially kidnapped from DSS.’
After the appeal and a court-ordered hearing in May, Judge McCarthy again ruled on July 15, 2026, that the Lewises were the twins’ legal parents.
The twins were moved to the Lewises’ home in September.
Bob and MaryBeth’s mansion in Elma. Bob is a retired FedEx pilot, while MaryBeth is a nurse
Allan and Bri are left wondering whether they will ever see the twins again. One of the children’s toys remains on a stool in their home
When the Daily Mail contacted MaryBeth again on Thursday to ask how the twins were settling in, she replied, ‘Oh, you wrote a terrible story about me,’ and then hung up.
The Steuben County Department of Social Services declined to comment on the twins’ circumstances.
Allan and Bri now face the painful uncertainty of whether they will ever see the children they raised and loved again.
Through tears, Bri said she wanted the twins to have proof of the love surrounding them in case they never get the opportunity to hear it directly.
‘If we never see them again, I want them to be able to read your words and know that we love them.’