How to Check a Surrogacy Agency: 5 Documents to Ask For

The question people ask is whether an agency is trustworthy. The more useful question is what would tell you, because most of the signals a surrogacy website asks you to rely on are ones the website controls.

In most destinations, no regulator is checking whether an agency is competent. Where regulation exists, it usually attaches to something else: the clinic, the laboratory, the escrow company, or the lawyers. In the United Kingdom, it is illegal to advertise for, or as, a surrogate under the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985, and the regulator whose name appears on assisted reproduction oversight, HFEA, licenses treatment clinics. Support organisations in that space are named by HFEA as sources of information, and they may be entered on the public charity register, but registration records an organisation’s stated purposes. It is not a licence to provide surrogacy services, and it does not mean anyone has assessed how well the organisation does it.

That distinction is the whole discipline of evaluating a provider: ask what a given credential actually certifies.

What an agency fee buys

Agencies describe the same service differently, which is why identical-looking fees are not comparable. Ask for the service list in the contract rather than the brochure, and separate four things:

1. Coordination. Scheduling, communication, screening logistics, case management.
2. Matching. Finding and introducing a candidate, and how many attempts the fee covers.
3. Program continuation. What happens if a match dissolves, a cycle fails, or a pregnancy is lost, and what further fee applies.
4. Anything passed through. Legal, medical, escrow and insurance costs that are described inside a package price but billed by someone else.

Then ask what the agency does not do. In a well-run program the answers are: it does not give you legal advice, it does not decide parentage, and it does not act as the carrier’s adviser.

The five documents to ask for before signing

Request these before any deposit, and read them as documents rather than as evidence of goodwill.

• The draft surrogacy agreement. Professional guidance puts the money inside that document rather than beside it: the agreement which formalises the arrangement is expected to carry its whole financial side. An agency that cannot show you what its agreements generally cover is asking you to commit before the document exists.
• The fee schedule with a refund table. Not a sentence saying refunds are considered case by case.
• The escrow arrangement. Who holds it, what funds it, who authorises releases.
• The carrier’s independent legal advice and counselling arrangements. Each party should have separate legal representation, and independent counselling for both sides is the standard FIGO sets. Ask who provides it and who pays.
• A clinic relationship, stated precisely. Which clinic, which laboratory, and whether the agency is paid by them or merely works with them.

The questions, grouped by who can answer them

Put these in writing and keep the written answers. A verbal answer to a structural question is not an answer.

To the agency

1. Which of the four service categories does my fee cover, and which are billed separately?
2. How many matching attempts does the fee cover, and how long does matching typically take here?
3. What is refunded, at what point, and calculated how?
4. What happens if the carrier withdraws after the agreement is signed?
5. What happens if a pregnancy is lost in the first, second or third trimester?
6. Who provides the carrier’s independent legal advice and counselling, and who pays for it?
7. Which clinic and laboratory, and is there any financial relationship between them and the agency?
8. How many programs have you run, and can I speak to intended parents from previous ones?

To a lawyer admitted in that jurisdiction 9. Is this arrangement enforceable where we would sign it? 10. What is the parentage route, and what do I hold at birth versus after a court process? 11. Will my own country recognise the order and the birth registration? 12. Does the agreement allocate any risk to me that I have not been told about?

To the clinic 13. What screening and treatment steps does this program follow, and does it meet the counselling standard described above? 14. How many transfer attempts do you advise before we reassess, and what does each cost?

To the escrow provider 15. What must be in escrow, by when, and who authorises each disbursement?

Six signals worth taking seriously

None of these is proof of a bad provider. Each is a reason to slow down and get a professional answer.

1. Legal assurance from a non-lawyer. An agency telling you that parentage or enforceability is settled is describing its sales position. In some US jurisdictions carrier contracts are unenforceable or void, which is exactly why the question needs a lawyer rather than confidence.
2. No refund table, or refunds described as discretionary. A payment schedule without a stated refund mechanism puts all the downside on the party who paid first.
3. Counselling treated as a checkbox. If independent counselling for the carrier is presented as optional or as a formality, the program is out of step with the position FIGO takes.
4. Pressure to commit before reading the agreement. Time-limited offers exist to shorten your document review.
5. A single party holding the money and deciding its release. Escrow should be neutral, not an agency’s own account.
6. Undisclosed relationships. If an agency is paid for referrals by a clinic, or a clinic pays for introductions, that is not disqualifying on its own. Concealing it is.

Why there is no recommended-agency list

A defensible ranking would need audited data on how many programs each provider ran, what they charged, what happened when they failed, and how carriers were treated. Registry surveillance in the United States records treatment cycles and does not record agreements, compensation or program outcomes. Nobody counts what a ranking would have to be built from.

So the deliverable is a method: documents, questions, and a named professional for each question. The quote comparison tool is where that method goes once you have two documents in hand.

None of this is advice about any specific agency, or a legal opinion about any agreement.