Intended Parents Legal Services

Jennifer can help you structure your agreement with your Gestational Surrogate and/or your Egg Donor or Sperm Donor in a way that can fully protect your parental rights. Jennifer understands how and why problems arise in this area of the law and designs Gestational Surrogate and Egg Donor contracts to avoid legal problems and to protect Intended Parents.

Jennifer has experience that will protect your legal rights and relationships by preparing and negotiating a comprehensive set of legal agreements with your Gestational Surrogate and/or your Donor. The agreement will detail the parties’ rights, obligations, intentions and expectations. Specifically, the agreement will address parental rights, custody, choice of hospital for delivery, post-birth contact between the parties, and health insurance. The agreement will also cover who makes medical decisions and how those decisions will be made during a pregnancy, payment of medical bills, liability for medical complications, financial considerations such as the gestational carrier/surrogate’s compensation and expenses including lost wages, legal fees, child care, housekeeping, and maternity clothes, coverage for life insurance, the need to provide medical history and personal medical information, continued contact through the process, and intended parents’ presence during doctor visits and the delivery.

Jennifer will be your advocate and will help you educate yourself on this rapidly developing area of the law to enable you to better understand the relevant factors and make the complicated decisions that will arise throughout the process. As part of the process, Jennifer will work with the staff at the hospital at which the Gestational Surrogate is to deliver to ensure a smooth process. At the client request, Jennifer will draft a detailed birthing plan with your approval that incorporates any specific requirements or procedures mandated by the hospital. Jennifer will work with you to devise a legal strategy that best fits your needs such as preparing a pre-birth petition requesting a court order recognizing your rights as the legal parents and terminating any presumed parental rights of the Gestational Surrogate. Doing so greatly facilitates the issuance of a birth certificate that lists the correct parentage of your child and simplifies the delivery process as well.

As your attorney, Jennifer will make sure that the entire process is structured in a manner that is legal, so that your parental rights over the most important thing you have ever created—your child—are fully protected.

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