Parental Rights When Using an Egg Donor

Figuring out parental rights after the surrogate baby is delivered raises a lot of questions. What is the procedure? What about the parental rights of an egg donor or a surrogate mother?

These questions bother all intended parents because every surrogacy is unique. With a help of fertility lawyers, your parental rights will be protected. But first, let’s see what are your options while choosing an egg donor, and how parental rights are regulated in the case of egg donation.

Choosing between the known and anonymous egg donors

There are two most prominent categories of egg donors ‒ known and anonymous. Everything is already in the name, so let’s dive into what these categories are about in terms of parental rights. There are actually a few more egg donation types, but we’ll start with a basic few.

Anonymous donors

When you choose an anonymous egg donor, it means that the privacy of both the intended parents and the egg donor is of high priority. You won’t meet an anonymous donor directly, and you and your child won’t have any communication means or any personal information about this person. This can be beneficial both to donors ‒ because their privacy is highly protected, and to intended parents, as they will have no ethical conflicts while raising a surrogate baby. No wonder it’s the most commonly preferred option both among egg donors and intended parents.

Although being anonymous or working with anonymous egg donors seems a perfect solution, many couples choose other types of egg donor agreements for their own reasons.

Known donors

Unlike anonymous donations, known egg donors are allowed to share at least the bare minimum of their personal information. For a donor, this makes a donation journey more valuable, and for intended parents, working with a known donor brings a new experience and a better understanding of the egg donor’s background.

Being a known donor is always a personal decision in many countries that allow egg donation for surrogacy, but in Ukraine, only anonymous egg donations are allowed for the personal safety of both the intended parents and the egg donor.

You as a couple can choose any of the available options without fear.

Parental rights for the egg donation process

If we’re talking specifically about parental rights for surrogacy programs in Ukraine, things are really liberal here.

According to Ukrainian reproduction law, a child born from a surrogate mother (including the cases when eggs from egg donors were used) legally belongs to their intended parents. Parental rights can be established fast after the baby is delivered, and you won’t have any legal problems with that.

With that in mind, it’s only logical that a child carried by the intended mother using donated eggs also becomes a legal parent of the child right after birth. As for the father, he has to write legal consent to be a father ‒ and after that, he will be recorded as one on the birth certificate.

Nearly the same goes for children born from embryo implantation technology. Only the biological parents of the baby can be considered legal parents and not the surrogate mother.

As you can see, every case highlights that egg donors and surrogate mothers are not to be considered legal parents for a child born with the use of assisted reproduction technologies. The law here always works in favor of the intended parents.

Types of egg donation arrangements

Finding an egg donor always requires a lot of paperwork. In fact, doing the paperwork the right way is always a priority as these legal documents establish your parental status and your rights during the surrogacy process.

The egg donation agreement is one of the most important documents in this case. It takes around a few weeks to get everything created and reviewed, and usually, the intended parents and an egg donor have different fertility attorneys working for them.

You already know about the differences between anonymous and known egg donors, but is there anything in between?

Actually, yes, there is. Apart from anonymous and known egg donation arrangements, there also are semi-open and open ones. Both of them also impact your life and the life of your child, so choosing the right type of egg donation agreement is a very responsible step. It’s only up to you to decide.

So, we know that a known doctor can personally know the intended parents ‒ and even maybe be their relatives or friends.

An anonymous egg donation agreement goes both ways: not only the intended parents don’t know any personal information about the donor, but even the donor also doesn’t know anything about the people who will receive the donated eggs. It’s a kind of mutual privacy agreement that suits both parties.

And if we are talking about a semi-open arrangement, it means that some information about the parents and the donor can be exchanged, although leaving important details out. In this case, a fertility clinic or donor agency works as an intermediate to facilitate the process.

Depending on what will both the egg donor and the parents choose, a semi-open egg donation agreement also allows deciding whether there will be any further direct communication between these two parties, or not.

An open egg donor arrangement gives both parties the most freedom of choice. Personal data can be shared directly on indirectly, and an egg donor will be able to discuss it with parents and decide if she wants to participate in the child’s further life.

Whatever type of egg donation agreement you choose, know that your parental rights are protected both by the law that gives intended parents a lot of freedom and by productive cooperation with an experienced fertility lawyer.