Nationwide Surrogacy Lawyers for Intended Parents
Protecting your rights before you sign, match or begin treatment.
FSLG attorneys provide legal guidance for surrogacy agreements, independent representation, legal clearance, parentage, birth records, and multistate or international arrangements for intended parents and surrogates.
Who We Offer Legal Help
Intended Parents
Full-service legal support for soon-to-be parents
International Parents
U.S. legal support for cross-border coordination.
LGBTQ Family Building
Clear legal guidance protecting every family’s rights.
Helping Build Families Since 2012
Focused fertility and surrogacy law
Fertility Attorneys Licensed in Nine States
Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Oregon, Texas and Washington
Nationwide and International Coordination
Nationwide Of-counsel and reproductive law network, international legal coordination
What Does a Surrogacy Lawyer Do?
A surrogacy lawyer helps connect the legal stages of the arrangement. The exact scope depends on the client represented, the structure of the arrangement, and the states or countries involved.
Review Agency and Clinic Documents
Agency agreements and clinic forms may contain binding terms related to fees, services, cancellation, consent, storage, financial responsibility, and dispute procedures. An attorney can review these documents before you commit, explain the obligations involved, and identify terms that need clarification.
Draft and Negotiate the Surrogacy Agreement
The gestational surrogacy agreement defines the intentions, rights, responsibilities, and expectations of the intended parents and surrogate. One attorney generally prepares the initial draft. The other party’s independent attorney reviews it and proposes revisions where appropriate.
Provide Independent Legal Representation
Intended parents and surrogates need separate attorneys because their legal interests are not identical. Donors may also need separate counsel when donated eggs, sperm, or embryos are involved.
Address Financial, Insurance, and Medical Terms
The agreement may address compensation, reimbursements, escrow, lost wages, childcare, travel, insurance, uncovered medical expenses, medical decisions, and foreseeable contingencies.
Confirm Legal Clearance Before Embryo Transfer
After the applicable agreement has been signed and notarized, FSLG issues a legal-clearance letter directly to the IVF clinic or agency. The letter confirms that the required legal documents have been completed so the clinic can decide whether to proceed under its protocols.
Plan for Parentage, Birth Records, and Travel
The agreement may not complete legal parentage by itself. Intended parents may also need a pre-birth order, post-birth order, adoption, or another legal procedure. FSLG also assists with hospital coordination, birth certificates, vital records, passports, apostilles, and related travel documentation.
When Should You Contact a Surrogacy Attorney?
Contact a surrogacy attorney before signing binding documents and before embryo transfer. You do not need to wait until you have matched with a surrogate.
Early involvement allows the attorney to identify which issues need attention now and which can be addressed later. It may also help identify unexpected liabilities or unclear responsibilities in an agency agreement before you sign.
- Before signing an agency agreement
- Before committing to a known surrogate
- Before signing clinic documents with legal implications
- After matching with a surrogate
- Before signing the surrogacy agreement
- Before funding escrow
- Before medications or embryo transfer
- When the parties live in different states
- When the intended parents live outside the United States
- When parentage or birth-record requirements are unclear
Who Does a Surrogacy Lawyer Represent?
The intended parents and surrogate are working toward the same goal, but each party needs advice aligned with their own interests. An agency or clinic may provide referrals or coordinate the process, but neither replaces independent legal counsel.
Legal Representation for Intended Parents
The intended parents' attorney may review the states and countries involved, negotiate the agreement, confirm legal clearance, plan the parentage process, and coordinate hospital and birth-related documentation.
Explore surrogacy law for intended parents
Independent Legal Counsel for Surrogates
The surrogate's attorney reviews the proposed agreement, explains her rights and obligations, answers questions, and negotiates changes where appropriate. The review may cover compensation, insurance, medical expenses, medical decisions, travel, lost wages, childcare, escrow, communication, privacy, and responsibilities before and after birth. California requires separate independent counsel in qualifying gestational surrogacy arrangements. Separate representation is also commonly used in other jurisdictions, subject to applicable law and professional ethics rules. In a typical arrangement, the intended parents pay the surrogate's reasonable legal fees. Her attorney nevertheless represents only her interests.
Explore about surrogacy law for surrogates
When Donor Agreements are Also Needed
Some arrangements involve donated eggs, sperm, or embryos. A separate donor agreement may be needed to address parental intent, compensation, confidentiality, disclosure, future contact, and the donor's rights and responsibilities.
What is Included in a Gestational Surrogacy Agreement?
A gestational surrogacy agreement is not simply a payment contract. It commonly addresses:
Addressing these matters before treatment gives the parties a shared legal framework for decisions, payments, communication, and unexpected changes.
- Parentage and legal intent
- Compensation, reimbursements, escrow, and expenses
- Medical care and decision-making
- Insurance and financial responsibility
- Communication, privacy, and travel
- Contingencies, delivery, and post-birth responsibilities
Parentage, Hospital Records, Birth Certificates
Signing the surrogacy agreement is not always the same as legally establishing parentage.
Depending on the jurisdiction and family circumstances, intended parents may need a pre-birth parentage order, post-birth parentage order, adoption, confirmatory proceeding, or another court or administrative process.
The appropriate process may depend on the birth state, the intended parents’ home state or country, marital status, genetic relationships, and family structure.
Parentage planning should begin well before delivery. This gives the legal team time to prepare filings, identify the correct court, coordinate with local counsel, and provide necessary documents to the hospital.
Family structure can also affect the legal strategy. LGBTQ+ intended parents may need a process that accounts for marital status, genetic relationships, or the number of intended parents.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are My Legal Rights as a Surrogate?
You have the final say over your own medical decisions, no contract can force you into a procedure like a C-section or amniocentesis against your active consent and in a medical emergency, your health takes priority. You’re entitled to your own independent attorney, paid for by the intended parents and to guaranteed compensation secured in an escrow account before your journey begins.
You also have the right to choose your own doctor and delivery hospital and you carry no legal or financial responsibility for the child after birth.
Most state frameworks also let you walk away without penalty any time before an embryo transfer takes place.
How Do Surrogacy Laws Differ From State to State?
The U.S. has no federal surrogacy law, so protections vary widely depending on where you live and more importantly, where you’ll give birth. States generally fall somewhere between fully supportive like California, which has some of the clearest legal protections for surrogates in the country and highly restrictive, like Louisiana, which limits compensated surrogacy to narrow circumstances or Nebraska, where compensated surrogacy contracts are void and unenforceable.
Because your state’s law is what actually governs your journey, it’s worth confirming exactly where you stand before you sign anything.
What Should I Look for in My Surrogacy Contract?
Make sure your escrow account is fully funded before you begin any medical procedures and that all your medical costs and insurance gaps are clearly the intended parents’ responsibility. Your contract should protect your right to choose your own doctor and make decisions that reflect your personal beliefs, without financial penalty. It should also clearly spell out what happens in situations like complications, multiples or a change in the intended parents’ circumstances.
The golden rule – if something matters to you, it needs to be written into the contract, not agreed to verbally.
What Legal Documents Will I Need to Sign?
Before any medical procedures, you’ll sign your Gestational Carrier Agreement, along with the fertility clinic’s informed consent forms and a medical information release. Later in the pregnancy, your attorney will prepare parentage order documents, a pre-birth or post-birth petition, depending on your state which confirms your support for the intended parents being named the legal parents.
At the hospital, you’ll sign state-specific paperwork that allows your birth records to route directly to the intended parents, based on the court order already in place.
What Happens Legally If the Intended Parents Separate During My Pregnancy?
It doesn’t change your legal protections. U.S. courts consistently apply an “intent to parent” standard, a principle meaning the intended parents remain legally responsible for the child even if their relationship ends during your pregnancy. Your compensation continues on schedule through your escrow account regardless of what’s happening between them and any custody questions are resolved between the intended parents and their own attorneys, not you.
Your agreement and your attorney are there to shield you from that conflict.
How Do I Find the Right Surrogacy Attorney?
Look for an attorney whose practice is substantially focused on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) law. Ideally someone recognized by the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys (AAAA) and licensed in the state where you’ll give birth.
They should represent you and only you in your specific journey, never both sides of the same transaction and their fees should be billed directly to the intended parents. You should never pay out of pocket.