Archive for the ‘fund management in third-party assisted reproduction’ Category
Workin’ 9-5 With an Escrow Agent
July 8, 2020 | By: Elizabeth
My good friends at Private Label Surrogacy recently asked me to help educate their prospective clients and gestational carriers about escrow agents. What is it that escrow agents do and why is it important?
Trust me that you don’t really want me to tell you the specific ins and outs of my day at Stork Escrow unless you want to fall asleep from boredom in the next few minutes. My life as an escrow agent “workin’ 9-5, what a way to make a livin’” (as Dolly sings it), is not the subject of this blog, nor should it be the subject of any blog because “it’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it”.
Fortunately for those reading this blog, it turns out the question was more general than asking about the specifics of what I do while I’m ‘waitin’ for the day my ship’ll come in.” Among other questions (which I will address in another part of this blog series), my friends at PLS wanted to know what the difference is between fund managers and escrow agents and when and why you need to hire one of us.
Well then, let me discuss “my service and devotion” . . . .
Nomenclature aside, escrow agents and fund managers are (or should be) the same thing: people or companies who are responsible for holding and distributing the money needed for surrogacy and egg donation arrangements. We exist to protect the people and the money involved in these third-party assisted reproduction arrangements.
In fact, I opened Stork Escrow with my partner Kelly DuMont to do just that: we “poured ourselves a cup of ambition” to protect the people involved in surrogacy and egg donation arrangements from financial harm. Kelly and I both had experience managing escrow accounts for third-party assisted reproduction and we had both heard some really sad stories of people losing their life savings from surrogacy and family building scams where money was stolen from the intended parents and the surrogate by people at the agency involved in the surrogacy arrangement. Kelly and I decided to work together to try and find a better way to protect people from getting hurt financially while they worked to build their dream family.
How escrow agents or fund managers achieve this goal—safeguarding the money and protecting people from getting hurt financially—is achieved in different ways and it’s sometimes dependent on state law. To some extent, where your surrogacy is going to take place may dictate some of the terms of your escrow arrangements.
California’s surrogacy statute, for example, has provisions pertaining to who can hold the funds and in what type of an account. If a licensed and bonded escrow agent is not used, California requires that funds be held in an “attorney trust account”. There are different types of attorney trust accounts that can be used but the bottom line is that these accounts are only available to attorneys and hold the attorneys to very high standards regarding the management of the funds. In contrast, some states require that independent or third-party escrow agents hold the money but don’t specify the type of bank account in which the funds must be held.
New York just passed new surrogacy legislation, the Child Parent Security Act (CPSA) which goes into effect in February of 2021. The CPSA requires that any party to a surrogacy arrangement deposit the money needed for the surrogacy with an independent escrow agent. New York feels that an independent third party provides necessary separation from the parties interested in the financial transactions involved in a surrogacy arrangement in order to protect everyone involved. In this context, the funds must be held by someone who has no relationship to the agency or to the people involved in the surrogacy arrangement.
Using an independent escrow agent prevents self-interest from interfering in the management of the money needed for the surrogacy journey. You don’t want it to be all “takin’ and no givin’” like that scam I mentioned. You want to know that no one is going to be taking your money except to give it to someone who legally is entitled to have it.
And that is really the answer. If you want to know what an escrow agent or fund manager is, what we’re supposed to do, and why we exist, that’s your reason: We are here to protect the money that the intended parents need to deposit to cover the surrogacy or egg donation expenses and we make sure it gets paid to the surrogate or egg donor in accordance with the terms of their respective contract. Call us whatever you want, escrow agent or fund manager, at the end of the day regardless of our name or title, our job is the same: to protect the financial interests of the parties to a gestational surrogacy or egg donation arrangement.
Third party assisted reproduction is a “rich man’s game, no matter what they call it”, and you may be using your life savings to make your family a reality. You want to know that you are not putting your money into “another man’s wallet”.
Why do you need an escrow agent or fund manager? “Well you’ve got dreams [s]he’ll never take away.”
Up next:
Do all escrow providers offer the same fund security? What are the different types of accounts used to hold funds and does it matter what type you use? What are the most important questions to ask your surrogacy agency about escrow fund management?
Filed under: Egg Donation, Family Building Law, Financing Fertility Treament or Adoption, fund management in third-party assisted reproduction, Gestational Carrier, Gestational Carrier Arrangements, Infertility Awareness, New York Reproductive Law, Reproductive Law, Surrogacy, surrogacy escrow management, Surrogacy in New York, Third-Party Assisted Reproduction, Uncategorized
Tags: egg donation escrow, escrow, fund management, surrogacy escrow
The Top Ten Things Reproductive Lawyers Can Help You With – Part 2
February 23, 2016 | By: Elizabeth
So in Part 1 we discussed some of the agreements you might need to enter into when building your family through third-party assisted reproduction and how my colleagues and I can help you with them. Now let’s take a look at some of the more obscure but equally important issues that might come up.
back to our top ten list:
(6) Using cryopreserved embryos in the event of a divorce or after a death. Do you know whether you can use frozen embryos after a divorce or separation? Did you know that this is one of the hottest legal issues in third-party assisted reproduction law (Hello Sofia!). What if you want to conceive a child using frozen embryos after your partner dies? Will you be a legal parent? Will your child be entitled to inherit from your partner’s estate, or your partner’s social security benefits? These are some of the most complicated and cutting-edge issues in reproductive law and you don’t have to be Sofia Vergara to regret not having had a thorough discussion with an attorney before you make decisions (or have a pre-conception embryo disposition agreement prepared or even just check off a box on a clinic consent form) that has the power to change your life plans. And heck, just look at Sherri Shepherd and her battle not to have child support obligations. That case just turns my stomach.
(7) Managing money in a surrogacy arrangement: You may be spending over $100,000 in connection with your surrogacy or receiving tens of thousands of dollars in compensation as a surrogate. Do you know where the money is being held? Do you know how and when it is being paid and what documentation, if any is being provided to support the payment? What happens if your agency goes under and the escrow account was held by the agency? Are independent escrow managers necessary and when should you retain one? Do the state laws which govern your surrogacy arrangement provide special rules for how and where money must be held? How do you know if your money is safe?
(8) Doing a home insemination: It may be a more affordable way to conceive your child (and more intimate as compared to the stirrups in your doc’s office), but will you have a legally recognized family if you do a home insemination? Did you know that in some states a doctor must perform the insemination in order to terminate the sperm donor’s parental rights and ensure that the intended parents are deemed legal parents?
(9) Getting your birth certificate: How and when can you get a birth certificate with the intended parents'(s) name(s) on them? Can you get them before the baby is born or only after birth? Do you need to do a second or step-parent adoption? Is the law in the State in which your baby will be born uniform throughout the State or does it vary County by County or even Judge by Judge? Do you know what you need to do, where you need to do it and when you need to do it in order to obtain a birth certificate for your child with your name on it? One of my colleagues has a fairly famous quote from an interview he gave about the fact that the ease with which he can or cannot obtain parentage orders sometimes comes down to the button he pushes in the elevator in the courthouse. Are you walking into a courthouse like that? Do you have any alternative?
(10) Understanding the impact of changing laws: Third-party assisted reproduction is a new and emerging area of the law. Some states have statutes governing egg and sperm donation, and surrogacy, others have only case law (or judge made) law. Some states have statutes or laws which are unfavorable and others have laws which are favorable to different types of third-party assisted reproduction. Some states have outdated laws that may change in the near future. Other states have laws which may be unconstitutional given recent decisions from the United States Supreme Court, but the state may not yet be complying with or adhering to new and evolving constitutional principles. When and how will these evolving laws impact your family building and the recognition of your family, as a family? And as long as we are discussing the status of various state laws, doctors (as much as we love and need them in this process) don’t always fully understand the laws, especially the nuances with which my colleagues and I have become familiar. Just as I would never try and tell my clients what their latest blood test results mean, and my clients should not listen to me with great seriousness when I put on my honorary lab coat, they shouldn’t listen to their doctor’s advice about what they can and cannot do to build their family. Sure, get her opinions on what options you have, but check with someone who actually practices reproductive law before you cross a type of third-party assisted reproduction off your list because your doctor tells you that option isn’t available it to you.
My colleagues and I can help you answer most, if not all of these questions. We can help you make smart (or smarter) choices as you begin the often complicated process of building your family using donor gametes like egg, sperm, or embryos, or with the help of a gestational surrogate. We can protect you in almost all of the scenarios and situations discussed in this top ten list. Reproductive lawyers are here to help you become a parent and help make sure that your legal parent-child relationship and family are recognized by the government and other people who might try to challenge your status as a mom or dad. It’s that simple. And it’s that important.
Filed under: anonymous sperm donation, Birth Certificates, Birth Orders, Current Affairs, Egg Donation, Embryo Disposition, Embryos, Family Building Law, Frozen Embryos, fund management in third-party assisted reproduction, Gestational Carrier Arrangements, infertility in the media, known sperm donation, Parentage Orders, Pre-Birth Orders, Reproductive Law, Reproductive Lawyers, Same Sex Parenting and Reproductive Law, Surrogacy, surrogacy escrow management, Third-Party Assisted Reproduction
Tags: birth orders, Egg Donation, Finances, gestational carrier, sperm donation, Surrogacy
