The former View co-host wants nothing to do with the 1-year-old boy, who was conceived using a donor egg, and she had fought being listed on the birth certificate and child support claims.

Charles Sykes / AP

Former View co-host Sherri Shepherd is now the legal mother of a boy born to her surrogate shortly after her marriage failed, losing a legal fight to stay out of his life. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review a lower court's ruling last year in which Shepherd was declared the mother of the now 1-year-old boy, who was conceived using a surrogate with a donor egg and sperm from her then-husband Lamar Sally. According to the court filings, Sally and Shepherd got married in 2011, decided to have a baby, and ultimately turned to fertility treatments. A year later, Shepherd and Sally signed an agreement with Reproductive Possibilities to enlist a surrogate to carry the embryo. Under the agreement, they could terminate the contract at any time provided the gestational carrier had not undergone the IVF/embryo transfer and if it was “confirmed the gestational carrier is NOT pregnant. “

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

Shepherd paid $100,000 during the surrogacy process, and she and Sally communicated often with the gestational carrier during the pregnancy. But shortly before the baby was born, Sally and Shepherd separated and both filed for divorce in May 2014. When the boy was born on Aug. 5, 2014, Shepherd fought to keep her name off the birth certificate, so the hospital listed the gestational carrier as the mother instead and billed her for hospital costs. However, after Sally moved to California, the state began a child support case against the gestational carrier. Shepherd, who co-hosted ABC's The View from 2007 to 2014, initially claimed to have been induced by fraud into signing the gestational contract, but later dropped the claim and argued she could become the baby’s mother only through adoption.



Evan Agostini / AP Sherri Shepherd with then-husband Lamar Sally.