Kyla Simpson, a Florida woman, is fighting for parental custody of her surrogate children after the intended parent, a Chinese man, never came to the U.S. to claim them, First Coast News first reported.
After nearly two years in her care, the children were taken from Simpson and have been in foster care since June 17, after the Chinese man hired a lawyer who filed an emergency child pick up order. It was later learned that passports were being obtained for the boys to be sent to China.
In response, Simpson's attorney, Ellen Kaplan, appealed to Florida's Fifth District Court of Appeal and filed an emergency motion to prevent the boys from being taken out of the country. If the children are sent to China, they can never be brought back home because China is not part of The Hague Abduction Convention that would protect the children from international abduction. The original emergency appeal was denied and Kaplan is now filing a new emergency motion for a rehearing, scheduled for the end of July.
Simpson gave birth to triplet boys just under two years ago on November 4, 2024, a month before her scheduled due date. She said she wanted to "bless someone with a child," and worked with a surrogate agency in California to bypass Florida surrogacy restrictions, which recently prohibited surrogacy contracts involving citizens or residents of designated "foreign countries of concern", which includes China.
After the triplets were born, Simpson stayed with her children in the NICU while they received preemie (preterm) care. She was legally granted custody until the intended parents came to pick up the children—however, the man never showed up, prompting Simpson to leave the hospital with the boys in January 2025, breastfeeding them and caring for them as her own.
According to obtained documents, Simpson continued having contact with the man, trying to help with getting travel documents for the triplets and even spoke about flying to China with them. The back and forth lasted for months as Simpson continued to hold custody and care for the children, until March 2025.
On March 21, 2025, Simpson detailed that two unnamed men showed up to her residence in a black SUV, demanding to take the children, to which Simpson refused.
She described the encounter by saying:
I don't feel comfortable doing all of these things and you're not coming to get them. I said either you, the people you had listed that could, if in case you passed away or something, they would have custody of these kids, them, or a representative from the agency to come and get these kids. I'm not handing them over to strangers.
Following the incident, communication ceased for several months between the individuals, and Simpson began trying to legally terminate the man's rights to adopt the children.
Tragically, one of the triplets passed away in August 2025 from RSV complications, leaving Simpson to grieve her son that she birthed and nursed. "I broke down crying over him. They had to pull me out of the room because I was crying. I'm like...say something. That was like my most bubbly baby," she said. Simpson adamantly referred to the boys as hers, saying, "Blood doesn't matter to me. How they look doesn't matter to me. Color doesn't matter. I birthed them."
According to Simpson's investigator, the FBI has begun looking into the case, but did not confirm whether an investigation was underway.
Currently, Florida law, including the recent July 1 ban on gestational surrogacy contracts with foreign countries of concern (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, and Venezuela), is easily bypassed through other states with more lax legislation. Karen Persis, an assisted reproductive technology attorney in Florida, told the local outlet that "People just going to enter into agreements in California. California's law provides that if there's just as much connectivity as the embryo transfer occurring in California, that California law can apply."
The Chinese man and his attorney did not respond to First Coast News's repeated inquiries about why the man could not come to the U.S. to pick up the children. Simpson remains devastated that her children were taken from her care after nearly two years and continues to legally battle for parental rights.