Dual purposed blog: a journal of my experience as an intended parent through surrogacy, and a resource for others going through the same experience.
Also visit my surrogate's blog (Link on the right) for the other half of the story!

Saturday, July 31, 2010

ANXIETY: the contract

I FINALLY recieved the first draft of our contract last night. I paid the attorney to do the contract 2 months ago. My surrogate starts her medications is 2 days and the contract is only NOW being drafted?! I'm quite upset about it. I'm now $12,000 into the surrogacy process and so I've got a lot of $ invested into my surrogate (and she knows it) so I'm so scared that she knows she's got leverage and can change things around from our original agreement between us.
Originally we agreed on 20K for a single baby and 25K for twins with extra for bedrest or c-section and NO other extras. But in the rough draft of the contract my attorney sent to us yesterday there were about 8 things that she included in there that we had not agreed on: $500 for a miscarriage, $5,000 if she needs a hysterectomy. I'm so nervous that my surrogate is going to change her mind and decides she wants these extras! We can't afford them!!! But now she has tons of leverage due to a contract that was drafted way too late.

Also, something that really bothered me about our contract was that it said that the surrogate gets paid the full amount (20-25K) as long as she makes it to 34 weeks pregnancy regardless of the outcome for the baby. I think this is crazy! In that case, what is to stop her from purposely trying to induce labor once she reaches 34 weeks? Who wants 6 more weeks of pregnancy if you can get paid the same for not enduring the most miserable part? Also, if I truely am paying her for her discomfort and time being pregnant (and not paying her for the baby) then why would she get the full reimbursment if she isn't pregnant for the full amount of time? I'm arguing this with my attorney right now but I don't know what the outcome will be yet.

I'm going crazy waiting to find out what my attorney is going to say about some of this stuff. Here I sit pulling my hair out waiting for emails from her....

1 comment:

  1. Ya know, my experience with contracts is that's just the way things are when you make contracts. I can imagine it's complicated for such an uncommon thing as a surrogacy. Like you, I hope the gal will just go along with what she verbally agreed to.

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