The removal of 21 children from the custody of a Los Angeles-area couple has put a spotlight on the practice of using surrogates to build a family. Surrogacy has no federal regulation, leaving it up to states to set the rules if they choose to allow it.

The kids — 15 at the couple’s mansion and six more living elsewhere — were taken by an LA County child welfare agency in May after the parents were accused of failing to intervene in the abuse of a baby by a nanny, police in Arcadia said.

The children range in age from 2 months to 13 years, with most between 1 and 3, police said. The FBI won’t comment but agents are investigating. Silvia Zhang, 38, and Guojun Xuan, 65, have not responded to emails seeking comment.

Police believe Zhang gave birth to one or two of the children while the rest were born by surrogate. Some women who were paid surrogates for the couple now say they were unaware that the couple was accumulating a supersize family, raising questions about their intentions.

“What were they going to do with these children?” said Deborah Wald, a lawyer in San Francisco whose expertise includes surrogacy law.

What is surrogacy?

Surrogacy is an agreement between parties to have a woman become pregnant, typically through an embryo transfer, and deliver a baby. The intended parent or parents might struggle with infertility. They also could be same-sex couples.

There’s no limit on how many children someone can have through surrogates or any other method, said Wald, who is not involved in the Arcadia case.

She acknowledged that California is considered a “surrogacy-friendly state” because it has clear laws around the process.

Both sides are required to have lawyers, and there must be a written, notarized contract before an embryo transfer, Wald said.

“The legitimate surrogacy community in California is very distressed when things like this happen,” Wald said of surrogates feeling deceived. ”We’ve worked very hard on legal and ethical standards. It hurts everyone when something like this happens.”

Matchmaker role

There are businesses that act as matchmakers, connecting surrogates to people who want to have children. State business records show a company called Mark Surrogacy Investment LLC had been registered at the Arcadia address of Zhang and Xuan.

It’s not clear if Zhang and Xuan set up the business solely to find surrogates for themselves. State records show the company terminated its business license in June.

Wald said there are no special licensing requirements in California for businesses that match surrogates with intended parents.

Many questions remain

Wald said there should have been plenty of checks and balances in the process, noting the role of fertility clinics in handling embryos.

“The first place typically is the matching program that matches the surrogate with an intended parent. But in this situation the intended parents were the matching program,” Wald said. “I am not familiar with any other prior case where that was true.”

Arcadia police said the six children who were not at the couple’s home were found with family friends. The couple’s house was “set up for a school environment,” Lt. Kollin Cieadlo said.

Zhang and Xuan were accused of neglect and arrested in May. Charges were not formally pursued at that time in order for an abuse investigation to continue, and detectives now believe there were other instances of abuse, Cieadlo said.

A 2-month-old infant with a traumatic head injury, allegedly at the hands of a nanny, remains in a hospital in stable condition, he said.

Keeping the family together

California law requires child welfare agencies to prioritize placing children who cannot safely be with their parents in homes with extended family, and requires siblings to be kept together unless it would endanger the child to do so, said Leslie Heimov, the executive director of the Children’s Law Center of California.

The Children’s Law Center has worked with some families with 10 to 12 children, Heimov said. A family with 20 children or more is “unusual,” she added.

It’s more complicated to find foster homes for larger families that can accommodate all the children’s needs, especially for infants, Heimov said.

In addition to expenses and limited space, it’s hard to give infants the proper stimulation and care they need if they are in a home with many other children, she said.

In cases involving many children, the state will sometimes get creative to make sure that siblings can maintain relationships with each other, like placing them in the same neighborhood, or placing them in different but related households, Heimov said.

A case involving over 20 children conceived through surrogacy would “present some legal questions,” said Heimov. “But it would not change our advocacy — we want every child we represent to be in a loving, safe home.”

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White reported from Detroit and Riddle from Montgomery, Alabama.