The Third Reason Why You Won’t Become Parents through Surrogacy

In this video, Page Provan Director and Award-Winning Surrogacy & Family Lawyer, Stephen Page discusses the 3rd reason why you won’t become parents through surrogacy.

Transcript

I’m Stephen Page from Page Proven Family and Fertility Lawyers. Since 1988, I’ve advised in over seventeen-hundred surrogacy journeys for clients throughout Australia, and at last count, thirty-one countries overseas.

In a previous video, I’ve said when not if, you will become parents through surrogacy is a certainty, and there are four exceptions, and I just want to talk about one of those and that exception is if you die. Now, you’ll be pleased to know that of those seventeen-hundred surrogacy journeys, to my knowledge, no one has yet died.

But you could be the first, and as Benjamin Franklin said, there are two certainties about life, death and taxes. Most Australians don’t have wills, but it’s absolutely essential that if there is the possibility that you could die during this surrogacy journey, that you protect that child.

Because what you don’t want to have happen is to have a child born somewhere else as a penniless orphan. Just imagine how vulnerable you feel, but imagine how vulnerable that child must be if that child’s financial interests are not protected, if that child’s care is not protected, that there isn’t someone appointed as a Guardian. So, there’s some basic things to do to protect that child.

Number one, have a will, get it properly drafted, get a lawyer to do it, someone who knows what they’re doing. Number two, go to a financial planner. Talk to a financial planner about making sure you have adequate life insurance, most of us have life insurance make sure it’s enough, and make sure the beneficiary is properly identified because the whole aim of this exercise to make sure that child is okay and number three, with your superannuation, talk to your financial planner about who you nominate as a beneficiary for that, because you want to make sure you have the right form of nomination and you nominate the right person, or do it in the right way.

That’s the financial planner who will give you that advice, and the aim of this exercise, of course, is to make sure that if in the most unlikely event you die because there are traffic accidents people do die unexpectedly, that this child will not be born a penniless orphan, that this child’s best interests will be protected.

Thank you.