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Jay Timmons and Rick Olson expected little legal trouble when they filed papers in Dane County Circuit Court last year to become the fathers of a son through a surrogate mother in Wisconsin.
They had good jobs — Timmons, 54, was the head of the pro-business National Association of Manufacturers, and Olson, 49, was a federal lobbyist for Capital One.
They were married in 2008 and have been together for 25 years. They also had two daughters through surrogacy. They had more than 150 letters of recommendation.
And Wisconsin courts tend to rubber-stamp these lightly regulated arrangements, especially when no one is contesting the matter, as was the case here.
But that didn't happen.
Timmons and Olson were plunged into a yearlong legal morass that has cost them $400,000 in legal expenses — on top of the $35,000 they paid the surrogate mother and $12,500 to a surrogacy agency.
Olson even had to quit his job to take up the legal case full time.
Then-Dane County Circuit Judge James Troupis appointed a guardian ad litem who billed the...
