It’s a scenario I encounter frequently: Intended Parents dive headfirst into their surrogacy journey, full of excitement and hope, only to hit a wall of unexpected financial burdens. Despite their best efforts to prepare, often there are overlooked expenses that catch them off guard. From agency fees to clinical costs, we're here to address it all in this Surrogacy Talk.
It’s a scenario I encounter frequently: Intended Parents dive headfirst into their surrogacy journey, full of excitement and hope, only to hit a wall of unexpected financial burdens. Despite their best efforts to prepare, often there are overlooked expenses that catch them off guard. From agency fees to clinical costs, we're here to address it all in this Surrogacy Talk.
Welcome to Surrogacy. Talk with me, your fabulous host and family building expert, Frank Golden. I'll be talking about surrogacy, IVF and making babies. Hi everyone! Frank Golden here, from Golden Surrogacy. And this is Surrogacy Talk. Before I get started, I would like to kindly ask that you please like and subscribe to Surrogacy Talk on YouTube and anywhere else that you consume your content. Also, don't forget to check out our fantastic blog at goldensurrogacy.com. Thank you so much for tuning in and for considering Golden Surrogacy your trusted source for surrogacy information. Hi friends. Today on Surrogacy Talk, I will be diving into additional surrogacy costs. What are they and how will they impact your total expense on your surrogacy journey? And there's typically three different cost categories that are missing from most projections that you might receive, such as clinical costs, your Surrogate's insurance, and then lastly, newborn medical. Let me dive right in and let's start going through numbers. Okay. So the first thing is with the surrogacy agency fee, the average throughout the country right now is about $30,000. Your Surrogate’s base compensation is averaging around$50,000 in most benefits packages. Increase that total by another $20,000 and then legal. Legal is usually about $10,000 total. And that covers your contract drafting as well as parentage. So with those categories, it's safe to say that most agencies might say about $110,000, or they might say$120,000, really, depending on what your Surrogate’s specific compensation packages is and the agency fee. However, once you go in to sign your retainer agreement, you might see other numbers or throughout the course of your journey, start paying for other fees and not know what they are because maybe they weren't mentioned before or you didn't budget for them. So what are they? Let's talk clinical. Clinical is something that isn't part of what a surrogacy agency advertises for their fees or your Surrogate’s compensation. And so it's typically overlooked. You can expect to spend if you have frozen embryos somewhere in the ballpark of $15,000. That typically covers the what they call the IVF coordination fees for the clinic, the embryo transfer fees, and your Surrogate to visit the clinic and be screened in addition to medications. However, if you're starting from scratch, as I say, and maybe you're working with a donor or you're creating embryos yourself, depending on the specific package you select at the clinic, your fees could be as high as $75,000. I I've seen all in packages that clinics be that high. So depending on your specific situation, you could spend anywhere from an additional $15,000 all the way up to $75,000. It really just depends on your unique circumstance. The next category I'd like to go into would be Surrogate insurance. This is a wild card in a surrogacy journey. And if your Surrogate does not have her own usable insurance policy, that is what we call Surrogate or surrogacy-friendly, those policies or private insurance indemnity policies, as they are called, could be anywhere from $15,000 all the way up to $45,000. And again, this is going to depend on your specific match and her insurance disposition. The next category, of course, would be newborn insurance, and this can be anywhere from $7,000 to $15,000 or more, depending on your specific insurance and in-network or out-of-network coverage, depending on where your delivery takes place, as well as your specific delivery circumstances. So those are the three categories. Again, the clinical fees, your Surrogate insurance and the newborn medical. And that would add on the low end if you were looking at clinical being $15,000, Surrogate insurance being $15,000, and newborn medical being on the low end of $7,000, that's an additional $40,000 in missing costs on the low end. And if you add that to the $110,000 from the categories that we know about the agency fee and the average Surrogate compensation, that puts the floor at around $150,000 and from previous Surrogacy Talks, you will know that that is usually what I say is the floor for a surrogacy journey now around $150,000, and that doesn't even dive into incidentals or unknown circumstances which we typically say budget an additional $20,000 for. So I hope this is helpful for you in terms of gauging additional cost categories for your surrogacy journey. And again, what they are and how they would impact your total. What I would also say is tune in to a future Surrogacy Talk, we’ll link that Surrogacy Talk to this segment, and I will go into the differences between what your journey will actually cost versus how much liquid funds you would need in order to start your surrogacy journey. And that's also very important and I hope this helps you start your surrogacy journey in a more informed manner with a budget that works for you. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you think of any questions or you have any comments, perhaps future content ideas, please do get in touch. I would love to hear from you. I can be contacted at our Instagram handle, which is @golden_surrogacy. And once again, I am Frank Golden reminding all of you that Everyone Deserves a Family.