# Financial Support...



## EJ_wales (Mar 8, 2007)

Not sure that 'etiquette' wise this is a good question to be asking and will not be offended if nobody replies.

My SIL has vaguely mentioned she wouldn't mind being a host surrogate for us once her own family is complete, not something I am pinning my hopes on but another option all the same.

We would obviously want to pay her 'costs' but how would we go working out what they are?

Do you look at how much that perosn would earn in work per month?  How do you provide financial support during the pregnancy?  Is it a case of paying for all her food, supplements, clothes, living expenses?

Or is it a case of working it out another way?  Apologies if I sound cluless - thats how I feel at the moment!!

Any pointers would be appreciated as this is very new ground to me!


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## Jo (Mar 22, 2002)

Hiya
When we went through our cycle, we had counselling and we went through all that with her, and we had a written plan in place, we were to pay for any clothes that Caroline needed whilst pg, Vits, special foods, help with child care, even down to a cleaner if needed, if our surrogate was unable to keep up with jobs, also to pay her wages whilst being off work for any scans (if work didn't pay for them).

You need to sit down a talk to your SIL and see what she has in mind 

Good Luck, and its a wonderful offer 

Love Jo
x x x


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## NatGamble (Mar 1, 2007)

As far as the law goes, you can only get your parental order (making you the legal parents) if you can show that no money other than 'reasonable expenses' has changed hands.  The legislation quite deliberately doesn't set a figure, so essentially this means what it says - you have to show that what you pay is compensation rather than reward.  

However, my experience has been that the courts are reasonably pragmatic about sums up to around £10,000 and only start getting worried if expenses goes above that.  But strictly speaking you could pay a much greater sum and get away with it if you could show that it was expenses (e.g. if you used a city banker as a surrogate who had massive loss of earnings or something) and equally you could come unstuck if you paid less and it was clear that the payment was more than expenses.

Not massively helpful I know, but hopefully it's useful to have an idea of how the rules work.

Natalie
[email protected]


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## OD2 (Oct 1, 2007)

One other thing that is also usually considered appropriate expenses is a holiday for the surrogate's family after the pregnancy, to relax, recover and reconnect as a family after the pressure of going through a surrogacy arrangement.  I expect the court reporter would query a fortnight clubbing in Magaloof, but a week in a country cottage in Wales would be nearer the mark.

People arrange to pay expenses in various ways, but we agreed a total figure, then we have just divided that by 9 and transfer that amount each month of the pregnancy to a special bank account which we have set up for our surrogate.  The bank statements from that account should be reassuring to the court reporter when the time comes and it also enabled us easily to pay pre-pregnancy expenses (supplements, travel costs to the clinic etc) without having to constantly be handing out a tenner here and twenty quid there, which is all a bit uncomfortable!  We trust Kate and Dennis implicitly, which obviously helps!!

F

F


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## EJ_wales (Mar 8, 2007)

Had to laugh about the country cottage in Wales holiday - living in Wales as I do i think that would be more punishment than holiday!!

Nat - thanks for the legal standing on it, if we get any/much further with it we would no doubt be contacting you for the legal viewpoint and legal help along the way.  I'm guessing you do phone consultation as travelling would be the issue.

Also, handy to have £10,000 as a kind of figure in mind, if that makes sense?  I had been wondering about up to £20,000 and seeing as people don't like talking 'money' it's difficult to know what you might be looking at.

Thanks girls for all your help, very very much appreciated!


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## surromummyuk (Oct 4, 2007)

i doubt very much that anyone would be asking to see bank statements,i only saw the court official for my second surrobabe a couple of weeks ago and she never even asked me about expenses and last time round all she did ask was did i receive expenses,no details.i do know that anything up to £15000 is considered reasonable expenses in the uk,so if you were asked for any more then you would be perfectly within your rights to refuse as anything over is illegal.


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