Surrogacy Law
Asher Hoffman Law Is Ready To Take Care of all your Surrogacy Legal Needs
Based in California, our team has accumulated vast experience for intended parents throughout the world. Our team has worked with clients from China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Africa, Japan, Canada, and more.
Fertility law can be a very challenging process, especially for people building a family through surrogacy. We understand that surrogacy is not always easy and we therefore make it our mission to take care of the entire legal process for you so that you can focus on building a family. Your family comes first and it is crucial to choose a firm that cares about your wellbeing and understands all the facets of surrogacy law so that you do not have to stress at all.
Asher Hoffman Law will manage all the legalities for you with sensitivity towards all of your needs with a cohesive and collaborative approach.
Why Choose Us
We will take care of all legalities and can also help you find the reputable and established professionals to fit all of your needs throughout this meaningful and beautiful process.
We pride ourselves on putting ourselves into each and every one of our clients’ shoes and asking ourselves the best possible approach for the contract at hand. Our strong understanding of assisted reproductive agreements and our experience in this field enables us to assist our clients have a smooth legal journey through this process so that they can focus on building their families.
Surrogacy Overview
Welcoming a child into the world is among life’s top priorities for many people, and many of them have chosen gestational surrogacy to complete their dream. A gestational carrier, also known as a surrogate, is someone who carries and delivers a child for a couple or for an individual.
Surrogates are impregnated through the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) by a certified physician who is specialized in fertility reproduction. In this process, a doctor will create an embryo by fertilizing eggs from the intended mother or an egg donor with sperm from the intended father or a sperm donor. Because the gestational carrier doesn’t provide generic material or egg, she is not the genetic or legal mother of the child.
“Gestational surrogacy is a great option for people who really want to be parents but have faced long odds.” says Emre Seli, MD, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist. Gestational surrogacy alone or in combination with egg donation is used with great success.
What is the medical process?
Once the intended parents matched with a potential gestational carrier, the surrogate will undergo series of evaluation and medical treatment. Evaluation includes a thorough medical and psychological screening and a consultation. The gestational carrier sometimes also undergoes a trial cycle that mimics the medication protocol followed during the embryo transfer cycle. The purpose of the trial cycle is to evaluate the response of her uterine lining to the medications, which helps prepare the uterus for the implantation of an embryo.
Depending on the individual’s or couple’s medical condition, eggs will either be provided by the intended mother or form an egg donor. Similarly, sperm may come from the intended father or from a sperm donor. Fertilization of the eggs by the sperm will occur via IVF to produce embryos.
Once a surrogacy agreement is executed and the surrogate completed all medical treatments, the embryo is then transferred to the gestational carrier, who will deliver the baby.
After the embryo transfer, fertility physicians will monitor the surrogate for approximately 10 weeks until they can hear the baby’s heartbeat. At that point, the gestational carrier can return to care from her own obstetrician-gynaecologist.
Asher Hoffman Law Surrogacy Legal Services
The comprehensive help we provide:
- Draft surrogate agreements between the intended parents and the surrogate to fit our clients needs.
- Provide surrogacy agreement review to intended parents or the surrogate
- Issue legal clearance letters required by physicians, fertility clinics, surrogacy agencies, and any other party assisting in the surrogacy process
- Keep surrogacy agencies informed on contract process and legal proceedings
- File court proceedings to establish parental rights between the intended parents and the child born through surrogacy
- Provide proper legal notice to the hospital and surrogate to make sure the birth certificate is completed according to court order
- Coordinate with vital records to obtain birth certificates
- Provide guardianship designations and healthcare powers of attorney if needed
- Assist with travel documents, if necessary