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.
It is our greatest privilege to help you build or expand your family with a comprehensive legal surrogacy agreement.
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.
It is our greatest privilege to provide you compassionate legal support as you create a family through egg donation.
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.
With experienced legal counsel and a well drafted and properly executed sperm donor agreement, you are preventing any possible challenges that could arise later with respect to parentage. These problems can happen in any sperm donor situation but happen most often when the donor is an “identified” donor, e.g., a family member or close friend.
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.
In the case of same-sex couples, these consent forms do not always provide all possible options, e.g., if embryos were created with sperm from two dads. We can assist you by working with the IVF Center to make your consent forms more comprehensive and inclusive of your particular experience.
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.
It is our greatest privilege to help you secure your rights as the child’s sole legal parents.
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.
It is our greatest privilege to provide you compassionate support in reviewing the parentage court pleadings.
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.
It is our greatest privilege to provide you compassionate support in obtain parentage orders and birth certificates through domestication in DC and Virginia.
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.
It is our greatest privilege to provide you compassionate legal support during your quest to obtain a birth certificate pursuant to the Status of Children of Assisted Conception statute.
A parentage order is a final court judgment that should be entitled to full faith and credit in every US state. The reality, however, is that this does not always prove true. In many states, a parentage order is not given deference it is owed, particularly if it conflicts with the policy of the second state. Accordingly, the most prudent legal approach – to protect the non-genetic parent’s legal rights and the child’s – is to add an extra legal step after the baby is born: a stepparent adoption.
A stepparent adoption (an abbreviated, streamlined form of adoption provided to married couples) or a second-parent adoption (for non-married couples) is typically completed in the state where the intended parents reside. A stepparent or second-parent adoption results in a court order that receives full faith and credit in all US states. Through a stepparent/second-parent adoption, therefore, the non-genetic parent receives equal legal rights as the genetic parent. And, the child’s rights (e.g., inheritance, etc.) are protected even if something should happen to the genetic parent. This is because adoption orders are honored in every state.
In light of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision and, in particular, Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion –requesting the Court (and his supporters) to bring cases to the Court allowing the Court to reexamine Obergefell under the precedent set in Dobbs (i.e., reexamine whether there is a Constitutional right to same-sex marriage) — we have been strongly recommending a stepparent adoption by the non-genetic parent even when intended parents are married. This was our recommendation before Oberfegell and it is with regret, but with our eyes fully open, that we now resume this advice, to protect all our LGBTQ+ parents and their children. We see The Respect for Marriage Act as a positive step forward to protect the rights of same-sex marriage. That Act, however, does not preempt state laws, and some 35 states have statutes or constitutional provisions that ban same-sex marriages. Therefore, if Obergefell is overturned, same-sex marriage would again be at risk in those states.
It is our greatest privilege to assist you obtain a stepparent or second-parent adoption to protect the both your legal rights and those of your children, without worrying whether the Court attempts to undermine additional rights.
We can assist parents who live in Maryland, DC, and Virginia in obtaining stepparent and second-parent adoptions. If you live in other states, we are happy to refer you to able counsel in that state.
Often, intended parents would like a second set of eyes on the forms they are asked to execute with the IVF Center prior to formal engagement. Our attorneys can provide you with competent, compassionate, and informed review of any engagement agreements or forms you are asked to execute.
It is our greatest privilege to provide you compassionate legal review of any services agreements with your IVF Center.
Many intended parents select their donors from an agency. Our attorneys can provide you with competent, compassionate, and informed review of the engagement agreements or forms you need to execute with an egg donor agency prior to formal engagement.
It is our greatest privilege to provide you compassionate legal review of any services agreements with your donor agency.
