Tools
What you do here: compare destinations and quotes, read the published cost figures, and turn what you find into a document you can hand to a lawyer or agency.
A guide explains a decision. The tools here work on the paper you already hold: a quote you were sent, the two countries you are choosing between, the questions a firm has not answered in writing.
5 tools ready to use
No account, and nothing you type leaves your browser. The comparisons are gone when you close the tab, and everything else leaves your browser only as a file you download.
Agency quote comparison
Enter the amounts from the quote you hold against nine fixed cost lines, and see what that total is actually made of, and which lines the quote never mentioned. Add the second quote when it arrives.
- Nine lines are printed for you, from the agency fee through to a contingency reserve
- A line you leave blank stays out of the total, so an incomplete quote cannot look complete
- One or two quotes download as a single document to take into the conversation
Destination comparison
Put two or three candidates on the same fields: legal basis, who may commission, payment, parentage at birth, published costs. Each column is a destination read against the same questions as the others.
- Each column repeats a published record rather than a fresh summary
- Where a record has no position, the column stays open instead of borrowing one from elsewhere
- Download the board, or carry the shortlist straight into the research checklist
Published cost figures
Each figure sits under the cost line it covers, not under a country, so a whole-program number is read against whole-program numbers.
- Five lines: the whole program, then medical, legal, recruiting, and what goes to the carrier
- Each row states the year and the currency the figure was published in
- No averaging and no conversion into a single currency
Destination research checklist
The questions that settle a destination: eligibility, parentage, nationality, medical scope, money, attendance, disputes. They go to a local professional, and the answers come back into the file you keep.
- Seven groups, thirty-three questions, ending with what happens when two professionals disagree
- Downloaded as a document with an empty box before every question
- Who answered, and on what date, goes beside that box
Agency question checklist
Thirty-one questions to put to an agency in writing before you sign, from what the fee actually buys through to what happens when a cycle fails.
- Seven groups, each standing on one decision: fee, money, the surrogate, medical, legal, failure, evidence
- Paste the document into an email so each answer arrives under its own question
- Keep the replies: an answer without a name and a date cannot be checked later
How the tools fit together
None of them decides for you. Each one carries a decision from reading into a conversation.
- 01
Read the guide behind it
A term you cannot place is usually defined in the guide that this tool belongs to.
- 02
Fill it with your own facts
Those gaps take your material: two families fill the same lines with quite different things.
- 03
Take the file into the conversation
Download it and bring it to the lawyer, clinic or agency, so the conversation has something specific to react to.
What you leave with
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A shortlist on one board
Three places answering the same questions in the same order, so the one that cannot answer yours shows itself.
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Two quotes on the same lines
The gap between two totals, with the lines still without a number listed beside it.
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A document you fill in yourself
How far you have written in it is how much of the work is left.
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A figure with its source and year
The same cost line across countries and across years, read side by side.
Before you start
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Use the document, not the memory
Enter what the quote says rather than the total you remember from the call. The wording is what you are checking.
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Write what it says before what it means
Put the provider’s words in first. The distance between their wording and your reading is the question to ask.
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Keep the name and the date
An answer you cannot trace to a person and a day is a claim rather than a fact.
The guides behind these tools
Three guides sit behind the five tools here, each one working through a decision the tool then asks you about.
All guides- Cost · 8 min read
Surrogacy Cost: What to Budget, What a Quote Leaves Out
How a surrogacy budget is built, what a quote usually leaves out, how escrow and refund terms work, and what the published cost figures are and are not.
- Agencies · 5 min read
How to Check a Surrogacy Agency: 5 Documents to Ask For
What an agency fee actually buys, what regulation does and does not cover, the five documents to ask for before signing, and the questions to put in writing.
- Destinations · 5 min read
4 Legal Questions to Settle Before Choosing a Country
Enforceability, parentage, eligibility and payment are four separate legal questions. How each one is decided, and what to put to a lawyer in writing.