Archives for August 2023

The Costs of LGBTQ Family Formation

How Much It Costs to Form an LGBTQI+ Family

Over the past decade, a considerable amount of progress has been made when it comes to LGBTQI+ civil rights, which has made it easier for LGBTQI+ people to start families. According to the 2023 LGBTQI+ Economic and Financial (LEAF) survey, around 36% of LGBTQI+ respondents are parents or primary guardians for one or more children. Regardless of how you choose to start a family, there are certain costs you’ll be tasked with paying.

Adoption Costs

If you’re looking to adopt a child into your LGBTQI+ family, the costs vary substantially depending on the adoption method you choose. Every type of adoption comes with different requirements and processes as well. For instance, you could decide to take part in an open or closed adoption.

In a closed adoption, the adoptive and biological parents don’t have much contact or details about one another. Open adoptions are less stringent in this regard. In most cases, the child’s birth parents and adoptive parents will exchange contact information and even maintain relationships over time. These adoptions usually cost anywhere from $8,000-$30,000. The other types of adoptions and their respective price ranges are:

  • Domestic or international adoptions – $25,000-$75,000
  • Independent adoptions – $15,000-$40,000
  • Private or public agency adoptions – $2,000-$50,000
  • Foster to adoption – $1,000-$5,000
  • Second-parent adoption – $2,000-$3,000

The factors that determine how much you pay during this process depend on the type of adoption you believe is best for your LGBTQI+ family. If you have questions about the adoption process, a New Jersey adoption attorney might be able to help.

Surrogacy Costs

If you aren’t interested in adoption, another solution that might interest you involves surrogacy. For instance, gestational surrogacy takes place when a donor’s fertilized egg is implanted through in vitro fertilization (IVF). It’s possible for the egg and sperm to come from a donor or biological parent. Surrogacy is expensive and can cost anywhere from $60,000 to $150,000.

There are many factors that determine what costs you pay. For instance, you could pay anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 as surrogate compensation. If you’re able to find a close friend or family member who will be an egg donor or surrogate without requiring compensation, your costs can be reduced significantly. While surrogates often require compensation of around $50,000, these costs can be higher if the pregnancy involves cesarean delivery or leads to the birth of twins.

During this process, you might also need to pay for the surrogate’s lost wages and living expenses, which could be $25,000 or more. Healthcare costs add up quickly when paying monthly premiums, deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance. Out-of-pocket expenses can be high since many insurance providers don’t provide much coverage for fertility treatment. Additional expenses come in the form of background checks and health screenings, which can add a few thousand dollars to your total costs.

In Vitro Fertilization and Artificial Insemination Costs

There are two primary types of assisted reproductive technology, which include in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination. In vitro fertilization has a success rate of around 50% or higher. During this process, eggs are retrieved from a woman’s ovaries, after which they are fertilized in a lab and transferred to a uterus. An IVF cycle takes around three weeks. However, the entire IVF process requires three cycles, which can take up to nine weeks. The costs range from $45,000 to $70,000.

Artificial insemination costs anywhere from $200-$2,000 and involves delivering sperm to a woman’s uterus or cervix. The two types of artificial insemination include intrauterine insemination (IUI) and intracervical insemination (ICI). The ICI process costs less.

Costs of Protecting LGBTQI+ Family

When you’re forming an LGBTQI+ family, you may eventually pay out-of-pocket legal expenses to secure your parentage. Legal fees occur when contracts need to be drafted and reviewed. Keep in mind that legally establishing parentage for you and your partner requires a court judgment, which can cost anywhere from $4,000 to $7,000. While certain states are currently taking steps to make this process simpler and more streamlined, progress still needs to be made to reduce costs. If you’re in the midst of creating an LGBTQI+ family, legal expenses are difficult to avoid altogether.

Starting a family can be costly for LGBTQI+ parents. However, there are numerous options available when building a family, which provides you with a certain amount of control over what the final costs will be. Call our New Jersey adoption attorney today at (856) 429-5005 if you’re getting ready to start the adoption process or go through assisted reproduction.

Surrogacy vs. Adoption

Should Your Family Pick Surrogacy or Adoption?

An estimated 2 to 4% of people in the United States have adopted, but over one-third of the population have at least given the option a thought. Many have also considered surrogacy. Both arrangements come with advantages and obstacles, and one might be the right fit for your family.

Genetic Factors

Surrogacy and adoption involve distinctly different processes. It gives intended parents a significant advantage if they know the steps they’ll have to take and everything that goes into these processes before they jump into one or the other. These are some of the main differences to bear in mind between surrogacy and adoption.

 

With gestational surrogacy, an embryo transfer is used to impregnate the surrogate mother with the genetic materials of the donors or parents. This means that the surrogate mother has no relation to the child even though she carries the baby to term. Rather, the baby is related to the parents or donors.

 

When you adopt, on the other hand, the birth mother is still biologically related to the child, and the adoptive couple is not. This may come with deep emotional implications between the birth parents and your child later on in life. All of this is on top of the potential legal challenges that this process may present as well.

 

Consider the genetic parents, yourselves as the adoptive couple, and the child you adopt as well. Think of how you’re going to handle the situation going forward. As the child grows up, it helps to have a plan in place for all of the difficult conversations so that there are no unpleasant surprises along the way.

 

With surrogacy, it’s often helpful that you are biologically connected from a legal point of view. For one thing, it gives intended parents more say over how the surrogacy process goes.

 

It’s possible for either one or both of the intended parents to be genetically related to their surrogate child. If a biological relation to your child is something that is important to you and your partner, it’s important to discuss the matter openly and be honest about your feelings.

Money Matters

Surrogacy comes with no shortage of fees and expenses. This is to cover the process of transferring the embryo as well as to compensate the surrogate mother and pay the healthcare costs associated with pregnancy and delivery. For all these reasons, surrogacy is by far the more costly option when compared to adoption.

 

Program fees, agency fees, and myriad professional services are inevitable no matter which of these routes you take. It’s going to be an expensive process whether you choose surrogacy or adoption, but the former comes with the most additional expenses.

 

Most of the time, the intended parents pay their surrogate. This is meant to compensate them for the time and effort and everything that they sacrificed throughout their pregnancy and the rest of the process. Payments from the intended parents are for living expenses, which are to cover things like rent, other bills, and groceries.

 

Unfortunately, couples who want to try surrogacy might not have as many opportunities to seek financing because surrogacy lacks a federal tax credit. If you choose to adopt, on the other hand, the adoption federal tax credit is a resource you may have access to. This is something that a New Jersey adoption attorney may be able to help you with.

The Matching Process

The process of matching with your child or surrogate mother is a major part of either process. As such, it can be the source of a significant amount of stress and anxiety.

 

In most adoptions, the intended parents decide on the kind of adoption situation they’re comfortable with. They can choose some things about what they’re looking for in a child, such as race or whether the child has been exposed to any substances. Adoptive parents should also decide if they want an arrangement with contact between the birth parents and child after they’ve been placed with the adoptive parents.

 

With adoption, the birth mother gets the final say as to where the child ends up. For more of a shared, reciprocal matching process, surrogacy might be what you’re looking for. Couples get to look through potential surrogates, and then the surrogates they choose have the opportunity to express mutual interest.

 

Call Cofsy & Zeidman for a New Jersey adoption attorney who can help you decide which of these arrangements is best for you. Contact our offices in New Jersey and Pennsylvania at (856) 429-5005.

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