After being medically and psychologically cleared we finally moved on to the legal process. The intended parents are responsible for the cost of the lawyer. I was given a list of surrogacy lawyers to choose from and the legal process was underway.
Just like anything when it comes to legal and lawyers this already seems like it is going to be the longest part of the process. From what I read in surrogacy blogs and facebook groups it seemed that legal usually takes 2-3 months to complete, even if you and the intended parents are on the same page with everything. I started legal at the end of January and because my intended parents were so on top of everything I received the draft of the contract within days and scheduled a meeting with my lawyer right away. My lawyer and I met via zoom just a few days later.
I read through the contract a few times and highlighted and used post-it notes throughout the document of things I wanted to go over. I also emailed my questions to my lawyer the day before we were scheduled to me to give the lawyer a heads up on what I wanted to discuss. She was really grateful that I was prepared and we were able to go through the 34 page document in an hour.
In total, legal took about 3 weeks. Since we matched before the process began we had discussed a lot of the material that was in the contract, so we did not have a lot of back and forth. Next on my surrogacy journey will be the start of my medication.
