Creative Family Connections has a respected and experienced legal team, starting with our Founder, Diane Hinson, who is a Harvard Law School cum laude graduate. We have been practicing Assisted Reproductive Technology law for more than 20 years. We have obtained landmark court rulings for our clients. And we created the first and leading map that explains surrogacy laws throughout the US: The US Surrogacy Law Map™. Our team of surrogacy lawyers are licensed in Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Connecticut.
We represent clients in surrogacy and assisted reproduction legal matters that are separate from our surrogate matching program and journey support. Our non-match legal clients include intended parents, surrogates, and also egg, sperm, and embryo donors. Find out more about how we can assist you through our wide variety of assisted reproductive legal services:
Our team of surrogacy attorneys will work with you to develop a customized surrogacy agreement, or surrogacy contract, that serves as the foundation for your surrogacy journey. We prepare your agreement after your surrogate completes medical and psychological screening. Your agreement will comply with the surrogacy laws of your gestational carrier’s state of residence and/or your state of residence (the “choice of law” is part of the legal analysis), and the agreement should clearly memorialize the parties’ intentions (i.e., to be a parent, to be a gestational surrogate, etc.). We also make sure you have a clear understanding of these rights and responsibilities. In addition, the agreement will cover privacy and protections for the surrogacy, a path to parenthood for the intended parents, and a mechanism for disputes resolution.
Our dedicated team of surrogacy lawyers will explain each stage of the process. The surrogacy contract helps manage the parties’ expectations regarding embryo transfer, pregnancy, termination, birth, and post-birth.
C'est notre plus grand privilège de vous aider à construire ou à élargir votre famille grâce à un accord légal complet de maternité de substitution.
As a surrogate, you have chosen to become a life-changing, incredible force for someone to start or expand their family! As you are an extremely important part of a surrogacy journey, it is critical that you receive competent, independent surrogacy legal advice from an attorney experienced in assisted reproductive technology (ART) before you enter into a surrogacy relationship. When we review your surrogacy contract with you, we make sure that the legal rights and responsibilities outlined in your agreement are clear, fair, and compliant with the applicable law and surrogacy legal strategy relevant to your case. We also want to make sure you understand what is in the agreement. For example, our surrogacy attorneys walk you through the entire agreement – It’s part of our due diligence and having a hands-on approach.
By ensuring that you have a comprehensive gestational carrier agreement at the outset, before you even start your IVF medications, we enable you (and your intended parent or parents) to focus less on the transactional parts of the arrangement and more on the exciting steps: celebrating the pregnancy and journey milestones!
We also include a provision in your surrogacy contract that gives you the right to contact us for ongoing legal advice throughout your journey. (We include this provision whenever we represent intended parents too.)
It is our greatest honor to provide you dedicated legal surrogacy support during your quest to help intended parents create a family through surrogacy.
We will work with you to develop a customized egg donor agreement that serves as the foundation for the egg donation. Typically, we prepare your egg donor contract once your egg donor completes medical and psychological screening. Our assisted reproductive lawyers will customize your egg donor agreement to your preferences for anonymity, privacy, future contact, and compliance with applicable law surrounding egg donation.
With experienced ART legal counsel and a well-drafted and properly executed egg donor agreement, you are preventing any possible challenges that could arise later with respect to parentage. These problems can happen in any egg donor situation, but happen most often when the egg donor is an “identified” donor, like a family member or close friend.
C'est notre plus grand privilège de vous fournir un soutien juridique compatissant alors que vous créez une famille grâce au don d'ovules.
As an egg donor, you are vital to intended parents building their families through assisted reproduction! You are changing someone’s life in an amazing way. And you deserve competent, independent legal advice from an attorney experienced in Assisted Reproductive Technology before you donate eggs. When we review your donor agreement, we make sure that the legal rights and responsibilities outlined in your donor agreement are clear, fair, and compliant with the applicable law. We make sure the allocation of these rights and obligations is clear to you and to the intended parents. We ensure that following the egg retrieval, you have no continuing obligations to any future embryos or children created with your donated eggs. We make sure you and the intended parents are on the same page regarding how the intended parents will use the eggs, any future contact between you and the intended parents, and whether the intended parents will inform you of any pregnancies involving your donated eggs. We also make sure you will be compensated for your time and services, regardless of the retrieval’s outcome.
It is our greatest privilege to provide you top-notch legal support during your journey to help intended parents create a family through egg donation.
Our team will work with you to develop a customized sperm donor agreement that serves as the foundation for the sperm donation. Typically, we prepare your agreement once your sperm donor completes medical and psychological screening. Our attorneys will guide you through the sperm donation process and customize your sperm donor agreement to your preferences for anonymity, privacy, future contact, and compliance with applicable gamete donation law.
Avec un conseil juridique expérimenté et un accord de don de sperme bien rédigé et correctement exécuté, vous évitez tout problème qui pourrait survenir plus tard en ce qui concerne la filiation.. Ces problèmes peuvent survenir dans n'importe quelle situation de don de sperme, mais se produisent le plus souvent lorsque le donneur est un donneur "identifié", par exemple un membre de la famille ou un ami proche.
It is our greatest privilege to provide you compassionate legal support as you help create a family through sperm donation.
As a sperm donor, you are a key component for many intended parents in building their families through assisted reproduction. As you are extremely important to the sperm donation arrangement, it is also critical that you receive competent, independent legal advice from an attorney experienced in Assisted Reproductive Technology before you donate sperm. When we review your sperm donor agreement, we make sure that the legal rights and responsibilities outlined in your donor agreement are clear, fair, and compliant with the applicable law. We will make sure the contract is crystal clear that it is the parents, not you, who has all the legal obligations (and rights) with respect to the embryos and children created from your sperm. We ensure that following the sperm donation, you have no continuing obligations to any future embryos or children created with your donated sperm.
We look forward to providing you compassionate legal support during your quest to help intended parents create a family through sperm donation.
Are you someone with leftover embryos who wants to donate them to an intended parent? Or, perhaps you are the potential recipient of donor embryos? Embryo donation is the right option for some parents to create their family through assisted reproductive technology. It is is more economical than egg retrievals, for example. Particularly if the donation is identified (known), but whenever it is from an individual donor (versus an embryo donation program), it is critical to have an embryo donation agreement in place to specifically address the rights of the parties and any future implications of the embryo donation.
It is our greatest privilege to provide you with dedicated legal support during your quest either to donate embryos or build a family through embryo donation.
Embryo Disposition Agreements can be critical when unmarried couples are pursuing a family through Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). This is true regardless of your sexual orientation. Typically, during ART, more embryos (and sometimes eggs) are created than are used, and these extra eggs and embryos are frozen and stored, initially at an IVF Center. The IVF Center requires intended parents to execute consent forms that delineate who owns the embryos. Essentially, the consent form requires the couple to create, in advance, an embryo disposition agreement to provide guidance so that the IVF Center is not caught in the middle should the couple later disagree.
Dans le cas des couples de même sexe, ces formulaires de consentement ne prévoient pas toujours toutes les options possibles, par exemple si les embryons ont été créés avec le sperme de deux pères. Nous pouvons vous aider en travaillant avec le centre de FIV pour que vos formulaires de consentement soient plus complets et tiennent compte de votre expérience particulière.
We look forward to providing you legal support to create or review an embryo disposition agreement.
Once a pregnancy is achieved, our attorneys can assist you with the court proceedings necessary to recognize you as the child’s sole legal parents and terminate any legal rights the surrogate may have as the person who will deliver the child. Our attorneys are licensed and obtain pre and post-birth parentage orders in Maryland, Washington DC, and Virginia.
C'est notre plus grand privilège de vous aider à obtenir vos droits en tant que seuls parents légaux de l'enfant.
Once a surrogate is pregnant, our attorneys can assist you with a necessary review of the court proceedings to establish the intended parents’ legal parentage obligations and rights and to help terminate any legal obligations (or rights) you may have after delivering the child through a surrogacy journey. Our team of surrogacy attorneys are licensed in Maryland, Washington DC, Virginia, and Connecticut.
C'est notre plus grand privilège de vous fournir un soutien compatissant dans l'examen des plaidoiries du tribunal de la filiation.
Sometimes, your legal strategy will include obtaining a pre-birth parentage order in a state outside the DC Metro area (e.g., based on the residence of the intended parents), and then having Maryland, the District of Columbia, or Virginia recognize the order if your surrogate is delivering there. In Maryland, Vital Records honors the out-of-state parentage order without the need for additional court action. In DC and Virginia, CFC surrogacy attorneys can take the out-of-state pre-birth court order and obtain a domestication order by a local court. The domestication order takes judicial formal recognition of the out-of-state order under the “Full Faith and Credit” clause of the Constitution and, in turn, directs the local vital records to honor the pre-birth order and issue a birth certificate naming only the intended parents as the child’s legal parents upon birth. This allows the intended parents the peace of mind of knowing DC and Virginia, much like Maryland, will enforce a pre-birth court order from another state.
C'est notre plus grand privilège de vous fournir un soutien compatissant pour obtenir des ordonnances de filiation et des certificats de naissance par domestication à DC et en Virginie.
If a surrogate gives birth in Virginia, the VA Surrogate Consent and Report Form is one of the steps necessary to obtain the child’s birth certificate. This is not a legal process, but rather an administrative one that secures the birth certificate under Virginia’s Status of Children of Assisted Conception statute. It must be signed and notarized by all parties no sooner than the fourth day after the child’s birth.
C'est notre plus grand privilège de vous fournir un soutien juridique compatissant pendant votre quête pour obtenir un certificat de naissance conformément à la loi sur le statut des enfants issus de la conception assistée.
Une ordonnance de filiation est une décision de justice définitive qui devrait bénéficier de la pleine foi et du crédit dans tous les États américains. La réalité, cependant, est que cela ne s'avère pas toujours vrai. Dans de nombreux États, une ordonnance de filiation ne reçoit pas la déférence qui lui est due, en particulier si elle est en conflit avec la politique du second État. Par conséquent, l'approche juridique la plus prudente - pour protéger les droits légaux du parent non génétique et ceux de l'enfant - consiste à ajouter une étape juridique supplémentaire après la naissance du bébé : une adoption par un beau-parent.
L'adoption par un beau-parent (forme abrégée et simplifiée d'adoption pour les couples mariés) ou l'adoption par un second parent (pour les couples non mariés) est généralement réalisée dans l'État où résident les futurs parents. L'adoption par un beau-parent ou un second parent donne lieu à une décision de justice qui bénéficie d'un crédit total dans tous les États américains. Dans le cadre d'une adoption par un beau-parent ou un second parent, le parent non génétique bénéficie donc des mêmes droits juridiques que le parent génétique. En outre, les droits de l'enfant (par exemple, l'héritage, etc.) sont protégés même si quelque chose devait arriver au parent génétique. En effet, les ordonnances d'adoption sont honorées dans tous les États.
A la lumière de l'arrêt de la Cour Suprême 2022 Dobbs et, en particulier, de l'opinion concordante du juge Thomas - qui demande à la Cour (et à ses partisans) de porter devant elle des affaires permettant à la Cour de réexaminer l'affaire Obergefell en vertu du précédent établi dans l'affaire Dobbs (c'est-à-dire réexaminer s'il existe un droit constitutionnel au mariage entre personnes de même sexe) - nous avons fortement recommandé l'adoption par le parent non génétique, même lorsque les parents intentionnels sont mariés. C'était notre recommandation avant Oberfegell et c'est avec regret, mais avec les yeux bien ouverts, que nous reprenons ce conseil, afin de protéger tous nos parents LGBTQ+ et leurs enfants. Nous considérons la loi sur le respect du mariage comme un pas en avant positif pour protéger les droits du mariage homosexuel. Toutefois, cette loi ne prévaut pas sur les lois des États, et quelque 35 États ont des lois ou des dispositions constitutionnelles qui interdisent les mariages entre personnes de même sexe. Par conséquent, si l'arrêt Obergefell est annulé, le mariage entre personnes de même sexe serait à nouveau menacé dans ces États.
C'est notre plus grand privilège de vous aider à obtenir une adoption par un beau-parent ou un second parent afin de protéger à la fois vos droits légaux et ceux de vos enfants, sans vous soucier de savoir si le tribunal tente de saper des droits supplémentaires.
Nous pouvons aider les parents qui vivent dans le Maryland, le DC et la Virginie à obtenir des adoptions par un beau-parent ou par un second parent. Si vous vivez dans d'autres États, nous serons heureux de vous orienter vers un conseil compétent dans cet État.
Souvent, les futurs parents souhaitent avoir un deuxième regard sur les formulaires qu'ils sont invités à signer avec le centre de FIV avant de s'engager officiellement. Nos avocats peuvent vous fournir un examen compétent, compatissant et informé de tout accord ou formulaire d'engagement qu'on vous demande d'exécuter.
C'est notre plus grand privilège de vous fournir un examen juridique compatissant de tout accord de services avec votre centre de FIV.
De nombreux futurs parents choisissent leurs donneurs auprès d'une agence. Nos avocats peuvent vous fournir un examen compétent, compatissant et informé des accords ou formulaires d'engagement que vous devez exécuter avec une agence de don d'ovules avant l'engagement officiel.
C'est notre plus grand privilège de vous fournir un examen juridique compatissant de tout accord de services avec votre agence donatrice.