Florida Surrogate Mother Battling For Custody After Intended Parent From China Allegedly Never Came To Get His Kids

A surrogate mother in Florida is now battling for custody of her sons after she claims the intended parent—a single man in China—left the babies unclaimed in the U.S. for months.

Almost 20 months ago, Kyla Simpson birthed triplet boys at University of Florida Health in Jacksonville, First Coast News reported Wednesday. Simpson told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Friday that she was hoping to “bless someone” with a kid through surrogacy.

“All of my money is gone from surrogacy,” Simpson said. “My whole point of going into surrogacy was to be able to buy a home, you know? And bless someone with a child. 
However, I didn’t expect that I was gonna be stuck with babies at, you know, at the beginning. And use the moneys to take care of them and never get my home. And now I’m fighting a legal battle where I have to get attorneys [involved], you know?”

“
I begged them, I broke down crying on the phone with them,” Simpson added. “I was going literally from firm to firm. You know, finding them on the internet. 
And I finally, and when I say knock on their door, I don’t mean literally. I’m just figuratively speaking, and I knocked the one, and at first, she was like, Oh, I’m done with litigation. I’m about to retire. 
And then she had me, she told me to call somebody, and then call her back, and I did, and I literally just broke down on the phone with her, and she said, ‘Kyla, I’m taking your case.’ She said she’s spiritual, and she said when she heard me break down and say that I already lost one of my sons, and now I just was [about to lose] two more.”

Simpson completed the required medical evaluations and worked with a California surrogacy agency to qualify as a gestational surrogate, according to First Coast News. After notching approval, she was matched with the intended parent in China and later became pregnant with triplet boys through in vitro fertilization (IVF), per the outlet.

The DCNF was unable to reach the intended parent for comment on Thursday.

Simpson gave birth to her sons roughly a month before her due date on Nov. 4, 2024, and the babies remained in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for about two months, according to First Coast News. She claimed the intended parent told her he was working on securing a visa to travel to the U.S. and claim his kids, per the report.

Simpson was granted physical custody until the man arrived at the hospital under their Gestational Surrogacy Hospital Plan, however, he never came to claim the babies before they were allowed to leave the hospital, First Coast News reported.

Simpson and her husband, Lincoln, had brought all of the boys home from the hospital by January 2025, First Coast News reported. Simpson continued breastfeeding the babies, taking them to their medical appointments and maintained communication with the intended parent, per the outlet.

The intended parent stated he was working to acquire a visa and asked for Simpson’s assistance in securing the boys’ travel documents, First Coast News reported, citing email correspondence between the two parties.

Simpson told First Coast News that she had even previously considered traveling to China to hand the babies to the intended parent.

“The thing about it is, this Asian man, this Chinese man, is still in China, Simpson told the DCNF. “His attorney is the one who is considered a custodian or something like that.”

The intended parent told Simpson in a March 21, 2025 email that he would ask his friend and an agent to get the babies in his place. Simpson told First Coast News that around that time, two unknown men arrived at her house in a black SUV.

“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 [any] strangers,” Simpson told First Coast News.

Simpson also told the outlet that communication between her and the intended parent deteriorated over the following months, and one of the triplets passed away due to complications from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in August 2025. RSV is a virus that causes infections of the lungs and respiratory tract, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Simpson claimed that she did not hear anything from the intended parent again until February 2026, First Coast News reported. In May, Simpson initiated legal proceedings to scrap the intended parent’s parental rights in order for her to formally adopt the boys, according to the outlet.

“I just, I reached out to him [the intended parent] in February 2026,” Simpson told the DCNF. “He didn’t respond to me until May 20th of 2026 … Christopher died last year [in] August 2025. He [the intended parent] would like Facebook posts, like, let me know he’s watching me, but never once did he reach out about Christopher.”

The intended parent later retained an attorney who filed an emergency child pick-up order to take the babies from Simpson’s custody, First Coast News reported. A judge in St. Johns County greenlit that order and the boys have remained in cradle care since June 17, per the outlet.

The intended parent has now retained an attorney, who filed an emergency motion seeking custody of the boys, according to First Coast News. A judge in St. Johns County granted the order, and the boys have remained in cradle care since June 17.

On Wednesday, the Fifth District Court of Appeal denied Simpson’s emergency motion and her attorney is now seeking a rehearing of the issue by filing another emergency motion, according to First Coast News.

“I feel like my back is against the wall,” Simpson told the DCNF.

A 10-minute hearing on the matter is set to commence in late July in St. Johns County court, according to First Coast News.

“Kyla’s story should prompt [everyone], including policymakers to ask whether our laws are truly protecting the most vulnerable people involved in these arrangements—the children,” The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (CBC) Executive Director Kallie Fell told the DCNF in a statement. “Surrogacy contracts are negotiated by adults, but it is children who ultimately live with the consequences of those agreements.”

The CBC “has long documented cases in which both domestic and international surrogacy creates legal, ethical, and human rights concerns that cross state and national borders,” Fell noted.

“Children can become caught between competing legal systems, immigration barriers, and contractual disputes, while surrogate mothers are often left carrying responsibilities and emotional burdens that extend far beyond pregnancy,” she added.

American writer Leah Libresco Sargeant wrote Thursday in an X post that “these boys are being irreparably harmed by being taken from the surrogate mother who loved them and nursed them when the Chinese man who hired her walked away.”

A surrogacy scandal involving a Chinese couple under investigation for alleged child abuse drew scrutiny over potential loose U.S. regulations that allow virtually any individual—including foreign nationals—to hire an American surrogate, the DCNF previously reported in August 2025.

“International surrogacy has repeatedly produced cases in which children have been abandoned, left in legal limbo, or rejected because of changes in the intended parents’ circumstances, medical conditions, relationship breakdowns, or cross-border legal complications, not to mention war or pandemics,” Fell said.