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Workin’ 9-5 With an Escrow Agent

July 8, 2020 | By:

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?

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If you have ever been infertile, Mother’s Day Can Freakin’ Suck.

May 12, 2019 | By:

 

If you have ever been infertile, Mother’s Day Can Freakin’ Suck.   This is a picture of my mom.  She had Stage IV endometriosis (like me), and as a result, only had me.  She wanted more babies but she couldn’t have them and she and my father were TTC before IVF or infertility treatment was an option.  She died a little over a year ago and for some reason this Mother’s Day has ripped-off what my grief counselor calls the “grief-band-aid” on so many different issues.  I miss my mom today in a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking way that maybe I haven’t since she died.  Maybe that is because she suffered from infertility too and we had a special bond on Mother’s Day, understanding each other’s pain even though we both became mothers.  But today, there is a pain and anger in me that I haven’t felt in years.  If I see one more picture of a pregnant belly in my news feed I will scream.  Or read one more comment about the diaper’s women wear after giving birth.  Please stop reminding me of what I couldn’t do!  My grief counselor tells me that losing both my parents (as an only child) within 5 months is called “complicated grief” but she also said that loss of anyone brings up every other loss I have ever experienced, namely all my many, many miscarriages.  That would make it very complicated grief, I guess.  I might have reached a point where I was okay not trying to carry a baby in my belly — losing a baby at 5 months when I was in such fear and denial that I couldn’t even acknowledge I was pregnant — helped me move past the ever-present yearning to feel a baby kick inside me.  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still hurt as a woman that I couldn’t carry a baby.  I have two beautiful children and should be able to celebrate today.  But I can’t.  I don’t have the one person who understood better than any other how conflicting Mother’s Day can be, in which to share the day, happiness and sadness tied together in a giant ball of conflicting emotions.  My family seems to have forgotten that I needed support today — that I will always need support on Mother’s Day.  I don’t blame my kids for not getting me a card or doing something special for me.  They are too young to understand how complicated this day is for a formerly infertile mom (who just lost her mom), and God-willing they will never understand the infertility piece.  My DH asked what was bothering me and I explained my headspace and then I told him I shouldn’t have to ask for cards or flowers or CHOCOLATE.  Just because our kids are teens doesn’t mean the pain of infertility is any less.  Apparently today, it is quite more, and this is one of the hardest Mother’s Days I have experienced.  I cannot control the internet, all the pictures of newborn babies (Archie’s feet, Amy and Gene), and pregnant bellies.  I can only control my response.  Which will be to stay off my phone, tablet and away from my computer.   My infertility grief-band-aid was ripped off today and it freakin’ sucks.  It doesn’t matter how your infertility resolves.  There always is a little piece of it in your heart.  My mom not being here today makes it harder to push the feelings aside, but no matter how much counseling we get, no matter how many babies we do or don’t ever have, Mother’s Day can be brutal.  Now where the Eff is the Chocolate in this house?

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Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes – How do you measure your life in infertility treatment?

March 26, 2015 | By:

 

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes

How do you measure your life in infertility treatment?

How do you measure a day, or a year?

 

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred tests
Five hundred twenty five thousand moments, oh dear
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred dollars
How do you measure, measure an IVF year?

In daylights, in sunsets
In phone calls, in cups of coffee
In inches, in pounds, in needles, in surgery
In five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, a year of infertility?

How about love for the baby you’re creating?
How about love for the people helping you conceive?
How about love for your partner or a friend?
Measure in love

Cycles of love
Cycles of love

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred blood draws
Five hundred twenty five thousand follicles to count
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred heartbeats
How do you measure the life of an infertile woman or a man?

In diagnoses that she learned
Or in times that he cried
In money they lost or the day the baby died?

It’s time now, to sing out
Though the story never ends
Let’s celebrate
Remember a year in the life of our infertile friends

Remember to love
Oh, you got to, you got to remember to love
Remember to love
You know that love is a gift from up above
Remember to love
Share love, give love, spread love
Measure in love
Measure, measure your infertility in love

Cycles of love
Cycles of love
Measure your infertility, measure your life in love

Inspired By Rent — Seasons Of Love, Lyrics

 

 

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