Every Egg Donor and Intended Parent that works with Creative Love must enter into a legal contract between parties before the beginning of an egg donor cycle. The intended parent – egg donor contract is seperate from the agency contract that you and the intended parents signs with us. It is important that each party receives professional and appropriate legal counseling.
Essential Elements in Egg Donation Legal Contracts
The important topics that should be covered in the legal contract are : donor compensation, travel agreement (if any travel is involved) legal obligations between parties and who the remaining egg or embryos in the cycle belong to. If travel is required before entering into the legal contract the egg donor and the intended parent must agree upon travel arrangements. A travel agreement will be signed by both parties and forwarded to both attorneys to incorporated into the legal contract. Also prior to the legal contract the donor and intended parent will agree upon the donors compensation and any miscellaneous expenses. Both parties will sign an agreement and it will be forwarded to both attorneys to incorporate into the legal contract.
Creative Love cannot provide legal advice to either parties. However, we recommend that our egg donors research their rights and laws regarding egg donation. Once you have been matched with an intended parent and have agreed to move forward in an egg donor cycle Creative Love will make arrangements for your legal representation. We only work with attorneys that have experience in Reproductive Law.
Crucial Steps in Intended Parent Contracts
The contract that you are agreeing upon with the intended parent is not to be taken lightly, it is a legal binding contract. Both parties will have separate legal representation to avoid any conflict between parties. The intended parents attorney is called the “drafting” attorney. The drafting attorney will write the contract and forward it to your attorney who is the “reviewing” attorney. Your attorney will forward the contract to you to review. Once you have reviewed the contract you will have a meeting with your attorney to clearly review the contract. If at that time you would like to make any changes to the contract before it is signed this is the time to do it.
It is important that you fully understand what is expected of you. Your attorney will explain to you what “breach of contract” means. If you break the contract once you have started the medication phase for no reason then you can be help in, breach of contract and could be help responsible to pay the intended parents cycle cost to date. Any changes that you are requesting to be made in the contract will be forwarded to the intended parents attorney.
Both parties must be in full agreement with any changes to the contract. After finalizing any contract changes and reaching agreement, both parties will sign their copies of the contract. Once you have signed your original copy of your contract and it has been returned to your attorney. The intended parents will sign and return their original copy to their attorney. At that point a legal clearance letter will be sent to the intended parents IVF clinic. We have listed several important issues that should be covered in your attorney consult and included in your contract.
Important issues to cover in your egg donor – intended parent contract:
- Donor compensation
- All travel expenses and any miscellaneous expenses
- Confidentiality concerns for all parties if you are participating in an anonymous cycle
- Egg Donors responsibilities as far as commitment to complete the cycle, Dr’s appointments, administration of medication, that all information provided is true and correct on her application and psychological and genetic consults
- Deciding if there will be any future contact with the intended parent or child born from the cycle.
- Clearly define that the intended parent that births the child born through egg donation is their sole responsibility both legally and financially
- Importance of disposition of any unused eggs or embryos from the cycle. You need to have a clear understanding that the intended parents might destroy unused embryos,donate to research,donate to another family. You need to voice your opinion know or leave to the discretion of the intended parents.
- The egg donor must promptly inform Creative Love of any changes to the original compensation, travel, or miscellaneous agreements.
- Creative Love will keep all Medical and Legal records for both parties if needed for future use
