Surrogacy Contract Details...Jan. 22-28

I have had a few people ask me about the details of my contract with Kiran Infertility Centre and what it entails. So I thought I would highlight some of details here. The contract is about ten pages long and starts with describing the incident and course of events between William, the surrogate and the clinic. It is then broken down in four sections explaining:

1.     Definitions: which basically states which words will be used and there meaning in the contract and covered most importantly when the clinic starts counting a pregnancy. Our contract says they count it on the day of embryo transfer; however a confirmation of pregnancy does not happen until an ultra sound detection of a fetal heart beat by the attending physician. This is important due to there is a payment schedule that goes with our program. It also covered the type of currency we will be using. It also confirmed the parties involved such as genetic father, embryos, child, etc.

2.    Parties Obligations: Here our contract gave us details of all that will be covered. This section is one of the most important and ours covered everything from our responsibilities, the clinic’s duties, and the surrogate responsibilities.

(This is just a basic outline; this section is actually 4 pages long)

US: the contract made sure that we had a physical evaluation, obey medical instructions/care, legal counsel, custody determination and acceptation, guardian of child in the event of William’s death, expenses incurred in the performance of this agreement, which included all the services offered in the package., cost in regards to premature or multiple births, and emergency procedures.

Surrogate: made sure that the surrogate had a psychological and physical evaluation, medical instructions/care, following instructions for the maintenance of pregnancy, testing, selective reduction on multiples, lifestyle prohibitions, living will, birth location, paternity and maternity termination of rights, custody determination, and custody acceptation.

Clinic: responsibility of embryo transfer, In-Vitro fertilization, medical care of surrogate, maintenance of pregnancy of surrogate, Information updates to the intended parents, include all services offered in the package,

3.    Contractual Consideration: This section breakdown the representation and warranties for all parties, assumption of risk, advice of counsel for all parties, confidentiality, termination of agreement, and an outline of actions, notices and documents and arbitration to name a few additions.

Basically that is the nutshell of our contract. I am sure that they vary from clinic to clinic, however I did like that every expense was itemised on our contract. We know what we are paying for and what is not covered. I also think it is important to have a living will for us as well. God forbid if something happened to William it could be a horrible thing that if we did not have this will, our future child could become parent less in India. Considering I am Canadian and Canada has a DNA requirement, I would not be able to claim the baby as my child.

We had our attorney Jeetesh Patel look over our contract. He was very helpful and read over our contract and checked out our clinic. He felt comfortable with our choice.