The expense of surrogacy is a considerable factor for intended parents before they select this process to build their family. Although the happiness of raising a child is incalculable, the cost involves in surrogacy involves multiple service charges.
Some of these services are compulsory, but some additional services may be intended parents need to opt for their convenience.
Altogether these service charges are calculated for estimating the total cost of surrogacy. Following are different possible service charges involved in the surrogacy process:
Agency fees
The agency fees are not fixed for everywhere, it varies from country to country, agency to agency. Intended parents need to pay a fixed amount of surrogacy fees for their registration and this charge needs to renew for every attempt.
However, the validity of payment does not depend upon the time but remains active until the completion of each surrogacy process.
Agency takes these fees for matching, checking the background of the surrogate, screening test for eligibility, education, and counseling requires for surrogacy to both intended parents and surrogates.
Advertising charge
The surrogacy agency takes extra charge for advertising to search for more prospective surrogates if intended parents do not select a surrogate from the agency’s database or intended parents do not have their known surrogate (identified surrogate).
Surrogacy agency takes this change for online advertising, traditional ads, using their other surrogate network for perfect matching.
Additional charges
The surrogacy agency takes additional charges to oversee the whole surrogacy process and for coordinating with other necessary services like insurance assessment, in-home assessment, etc.
Agency will take care of whether the pregnancy and delivery coverage included under the surrogate’s insurance.
Whereas, in-home assessment service requires surrogacy home assessment.
Variable costs
Apart from the above-mentioned fixed fees amount, some variable costs are also involved in the surrogacy process. The three most important expenses are legal cost, medical expense, and surrogate’s compensation.
Legal cost
Intended parents need to bear with legal cost as legal service is one of the essential requirements in surrogacy. The documentation and signing of a surrogacy agreement require legal advice.
The legal fees are not fixed for every situation and also vary due to laws and processing required for this service.
Medical expense
The surrogacy process involves multiple medical procedures including fertility medication, IVF procedure. Medical expense varies as the number of attempts for embryo transfer varies until the successful pregnancy report does not achieve.
Additional charges require in case of involvement of egg and/ or sperm donor. Even depending upon the pregnancy result like twins, triplets also require additional cost. Cesarean delivery requires an extra payment.
Surrogate compensation and reimbursement
Surrogate Compensation and reimbursement also make the surrogacy process an expensive venture. Intended parents need to pay basic compensation along with a monthly allowance to cover all the pregnancy-related costs. The compensation amount is the payment for her time, mental and physical involvement, exhaustion, and other sacrifices.
The compensation amount can vary depending upon the experience of the surrogate, lost wages, insurance coverage, the course of pregnancy, multiple pregnancy, involvement of invasive procedures, and other factors.
All these cost involvements make surrogacy a costly assisted reproductive technique.
Visit Also: Surrogacy Cost structure
Ravi Sharma is a self-motivated, successful entrepreneur and has a solid experience in the fertility segment. and he is the director at ARTbaby Global (ARThealthcare). He is a pharmacy graduate with post-graduation in business administration and has 14 years of rich experience in the field of infertility segment. He loves to write about IVF, Surrogacy, and other ART (assisted reproductive technology) news, issues, and updates. He is a Pharmacy graduate (B. Pharm) and M.B.A (marketing).
His most recent success includes the successful launch of the medical tourism company, ARTbaby, which offers treatment options for infertility, egg donation, and surrogacy. He likes spending time with his family and writing about various aspects of IVF surrogacy and donating eggs.