Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - The Cost of Surrogacy Pt 1: The Intended Parents

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

This is personal for Nicole: after going through a miscarriage last year, her and her fiancé are considering surrogacy. In this two-part episode she follows the money trail of surrogacy with Teo Martinez, CEO of the surrogacy agency Growing Generations. In this episode, they discuss the financial implications for intended parents. Tomorrow, they discuss the financial implications for the surrogate. To learn more about Growing Generations, click here: https://www.growinggenerations.com/ 

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Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. This is a personal one for me.

I've been completely open with you about my fertility journey. I've spoken several times about my miscarriage last year. I even brought my fertility doctor on the show, and I told you all about my egg freezing journey. I do this not because I love talking about my uterus in front of an audience, but because starting a family is expensive, and I want to share all of the information that I'm learning through my own experience. So here's an update, and this is something I haven't talked about publicly yet, but my fiancé and I have three frozen embryos. All girls, which is hardly surprising. In my career, supporting women has been a priority, and I guess that's my priority for my body too.

So now we're deciding what happens next. Do we try IVF? Or because of the fertility issues we've had, should we work with a surrogate? As we learned in the episode with my fertility doctor, egg freezing and IVF are both expensive processes. I understand working with a surrogate? As we learned in the episode with my fertility doctor, egg freezing and IVF are both expensive processes. I understand working with a surrogate is even more expensive, but I really wanted to understand the costs. And because I'm considering working with a surrogate myself, I really wanted to understand the financial implications for the surrogates and whether there are guardrails in place to ensure that surrogates are paid fairly. Over the course of the next two episodes, I'm sharing my conversation with Tio Martinez, CEO of the surrogacy agency Growing

Generations. In today's episode, we're discussing the financial implications for intended parents. In tomorrow's episode, we're going to focus on the financial implications for the surrogate. Here's part one of our conversation. Well, Tio, I'm so excited to have you here. Welcome to Money Rehab. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Your company, Growing Generations, has been doing great work democratizing family since the jump. Early on in your company's history, you really focused on helping the then underserved segment of intended parents, the LGBTQ community. And then you also became one of the first companies to use breakthrough technology to allow HIV positive men to become biological parents through IVF and surrogacy. Amazing.

So I'd like to start there if you can. Can you share some common circumstances that lead people to consider surrogacy? Sure. So, you know, you kind of touched upon it. I mean, there's people who just can't do this biologically and they have a real desire to have a genetic connection to their child. But surrogacy provides a process by which you can really have intention in what you're doing in terms of the creation of your child. So, you know, for most of us, we kind of take that for granted. You know, we just do the ordinary way and have children and it's just kind of what we plan to do. So, surrogacy allows you to have a say and have a good amount of guarantee and being able to have a child. You know, there's lots of alternatives, you know,

people will try adoption and things like that. And that's a wonderful thing to bless a child by adopting it into your family. And there are people who really wish to have a connection through genetics or, you know, they want to be able to plan their pathway, so to speak. Yeah, it's actually very timely in my life. It's something that my fiance and I are looking into actively. I've talked about on the show going through miscarriage and infertility and surrogacy has been one of the options. We're just now getting into it. So I'd love to pick your brain specifically about the money trail. We are moneyhab. So let's say I was looking to have a child by surrogacy.

I made an appointment with you. I went into the office. Can you give me a breakdown of what I should expect to pay? Yeah, sure. So you would come into our office. We'd give you a consultation. The consultation is free. What we're going to do is we're going to educate you on how this process works, timeline, all the varying costs. We'll talk about potential risks that you want to consider, all of these things, who surrogates are and why they do that. When you want to get started is when you basically say, listen, I'm going to sign this contract with you. I'm going to make an initial payment. And then what we're going to do is we're going to get you on a waitlist to be matched with a

surrogate. So with our agency, that first payment would be a $25,000 payment. So that'd be your initial deposit, so to speak. The rest of the money is really going to be deposited into an escrow account from which all the expenses are going to be paid about 12 months to a year and a half later, essentially, once we find your surrogate match and include it in those costs. So overall, you're looking at about $140,000 on the lower end to about $200,000 on the higher end for one attempt at pregnancy. And that's going to include everything. But there's some factors in terms of that range of costs. You know, you have to do multiple attempts, that type of thing. So there are a lot of related costs.

So the surrogates, medication, doctor's appointments, all that. Does that get paid from the escrow account or how will that work? Yeah, it just depends. So there are some things that you can pay directly. Maybe there's some things that you have insurance coverage for, or you have an employer that provides a benefit. So for instance, there's lots of companies out there right now that provide benefits. Netflix, Disney, a lot of these bigger companies, but also smaller companies will actually provide reimbursements. typically, you could pay your IVF doctor directly. But if you wished for your surrogacy agency to manage it all for you, you could have put that in the escrow account and we'd take care of it for you. And what if you have to do multiple rounds of IVF? Yeah. So typically, you're going to spend between about $20,000 and $30,000 for each additional round. And what that's going to

include would be the medications that you talked about for your surrogate, the medical cost of doing the embryo implantation, and then things like travel or additional monthly costs for the surrogate, such as health insurance. Maternity clothes, I'm assuming, food. Well, the surrogate already has her own food budget, right? So you're not having to pay for her food, so to speak. But she will have included in her compensation allowances for things like maternity clothing. Okay, got it. So there's a salary that is already predetermined through the agency. And what does that look like? Yeah. So the surrogate will be presented to you with

a profile. So she'll have photos, tell you about herself, her family. By the way, all surrogates already have had a child of their own. So these are already moms with some proven medical history. The benefit package will come with that profile. And the benefit package is going to include all the different compensations and expenses that she could receive either routinely or if, for instance, let's say she had a C-section, which is not always guaranteed. So you're looking at a range of between $52,000 to around $63,000 in terms of the surrogate's benefit package, including wages, if she works and she needs to be reimbursed wages for missed work or appointments and things. And that's for a first-time surrogate. So about $52,000 to $63,000. Experienced surrogates,

so those are women who've done this at least once before, can usually get an additional compensation of anywhere between $5,000 and $35,000 on top of that, that $52,000 to $63,000. Okay. I want to dig into more of the surrogacy side of this equation, but let's stick with parents for a second. Let's say I went into my appointment and I told you, Tio, I really need to do this for whatever reason. I can't afford the expenses that you just broke down. What would you say? What options would I have or would I just not be able to pursue surrogacy? Yeah. So it depends. So as I mentioned earlier, we could help you to explore to see if you had some kind of benefits from your employer or your insurance is usually the first place we go to.

There are opportunities to take out financing from various banks offer these for these types of things, surrogacy included. So we could look at that to see if you could afford to take out financing from various banks offer these for these types of things, surrogacy included. So we could look at that to see if you could afford to take out a loan and pay it back over time. And usually they give you a pretty generous payback, five to seven years. The third thing is something that we've been able to develop with the help of some of our former clients, which is a scholarship fund or a grant fund. So at Growing Generations, we have what's called the Isabella Scholarship.

And it was created by intended parents of ours who they just fell in love with their surrogate, whose name happens to be Isabella. And they were just so taken aback by that there's a person out there who would actually help them with this. This husband and wife, they just struggled and struggled and struggled. And they tried everything. And finally came to, they just couldn't get pregnant on their

own for various reasons. And that surrogacy was an option. There was a woman out there who would do this, just kind of just blew them away. So they're people who have, they have access to money that they wish to give away. They're philanthropic. And so they just decided, hey, if we can help you, can we give you this money? You manage it. And you give people discounts on their processes and things like that. So we said, sure. So we discounted our fee. We took some of the funds from this grant program and we're able to help people to afford this process who couldn't quite make it. And actually, this year, we've already funded two cases that will be paid for completely for free. They won't pay a dime. And that's through the help of other intended parents, the set of intended parents who contributed to the fund.

We work with professionals. We waive our fees completely. So we understand at Growing Generations that this is a process that most people just can't afford. It's just really beyond the means of most people. So we wanted to be able to, one, provide this to people who just need a little bit of help to get there,

but also to people for whom never would this ever be a possibility. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money Rehab will be right back. Now for some more Money Rehab. That's awesome. I have a little pause about the financing option there. I don't know if anyone should be financing a surrogacy if they can afford that. I'm not sure they're going to be able to afford a lot of the other things down the road, but that's neither here nor there. It's awesome that you guys have scholarships.

Is there any part of surrogacy covered by insurance for parents? I know you mentioned some of the companies like the Netflix's of the world that pay for it, but what about like Blue Cross or those insurance companies? Yeah, it depends on the policy. So every policy is different. Generally speaking, insurance policies aren't going to provide a huge amount of coverage. Where they're typically going to provide coverage is the IVF process. So they may reimburse or fund a certain part of your egg retrieval, medications, things like that. Some insurance companies may go a step farther and

fund some for your surrogate. It's usually going to be around the medical. Now, some employers will use their insurance providers to help administrate their employee benefits. So it's really a benefit to the employer, but it's being operated through the insurance policy. And in those cases, I've seen reimbursements of anywhere from $35,000 to $100,000 for anything related to having to do the surrogacy process. I would love to link if you have a list of some of the companies that offer. Yeah, so my staff, they put together a whole list of all these different companies.

So after the show, I'll be happy to send that to you. Yeah, that would be great. I would love to just send that to you. Yeah, that would be great. I would love to just give that to our listeners as a resource during the great resignation. People are looking for other jobs and this is a big deal. Just logistically, how do you even refer? Am I doing it correctly?

Do you use a surrogate or do you hire a surrogate? Or what would be the vernacular? We match you with a surrogate. Match with a surrogate or do you hire a surrogate or what would be the vernacular? We match you with a surrogate. Match with the surrogate. So if I'm looking for a surrogate, would I say I am using a surrogate for my pregnancy? You might say. Help me talk about it. Yeah.

You might say I'm working with a surrogate. Okay. Yeah. You know, you could. I mean, some people. I guess in this day and age, using somebody is probably not a good turn of phrase. Sure. Yeah. I don't, you know, most people don't use that term or hiring a surrogate is usually not used because it's, you know, I mean, that's, there's a lot in that because throughout surrogacies, you know,

time on this earth, there's been opponents and proponents for it. And so what we're looking at is compensating a woman for carrying a child that she's going to then relinquish to somebody else. And so I think one way to look at it is that when people think about a surrogate and who she is, they wonder what kind of person would even do this. They think they're probably weird, or somebody you've never met before. And then you'll meet the surrogate. And the most common feedback we get from intended parents is, she's so normal. And of course, for us, that's obvious. But when you've never met a surrogate, and you don't know why she's so normal, you know? And of course, like for us, that's like obvious, but when you've never met a surrogate and you don't know why she would do this,

or you don't know anything about her, you kind of make up stories in your head. Or you think of the movie, baby mama. Yeah. Well, so media is the worst for depicting. I agree. I would say not the worst period, but it's the worst for depicting the reality of anything. I think for the most part, especially when it's a dramatized, scripted type of thing, because that's what sells, right? Because that's what you want to hear. And the fact is that that's not what professional surrogacy is. Professional or sometimes referred to as commercial surrogacy is there's a surrogate who's getting paid. There's professionals involved who are shepherding this process from A to B.

And we receive thousands of applicants every year, literally thousands of surrogate applicants. We take fewer than 2%. So there's a lot of people who just are not qualified to start. And then as you get through to the people who really are not qualified to start. And then as you get through to the people who really are qualified, really have a great intention for wanting to do this, you'll find things that unfortunately disqualify them. Because not everybody gets to be a surrogate. As much as we would love to have everyone be able to do this, you really have a high bar. And you're talking about the ability physically to do this. You're talking about the ability in your own life financially just to be able to take

the time out to have a support system, all that type of stuff. So I think a lot of people see it as like, I'm working with a surrogate because they feel like it's this thing we're doing together, moving forward to achieve a common goal. And you talked about like a year timeline or so for matching. Is that because of a lot of the legal stuff that has to go on as well? Not really. So actually, in our post-COVID world, the wait time has been really exaggerated and exacerbated in a way that's never, I've never, I've been doing this almost 24 years. So I've never seen it like this, except in the very beginning and the very beginning, you know, almost a quarter of a century ago, it would be like, well, we might find you a surrogate in like a year or two years. Because I mean, when I told

people what I did for a living, it took like a half an hour, you know, and there was it took even longer sometimes because there were so many questions. Now I tell you, you know, I do surrogates, you know, like, oh, yeah, my wife's cousin was a surrogate. You know, it's that easy to explain. So back then it was harder to find women to do this. Now what happened is that when COVID hit, most people, most intended parents or clients decided they didn't want to do this process. They wanted to wait. And then last year, it seems like they all had a conversation and decided to come back all at the same time. And this is like an industry-wide thing. So the wait times went from three to eight months to get a surrogate to 12 months to 18 months.

three to eight months to get a surrogate to 12 to 12 months to 18 months. And this seems to be something talked about amongst high profile celebrities. You see that a lot lately from Kim Kardashian to Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Jessica Parker. I think lately in the news, Jamie Chung's surrogacy has been a headline because she said she wanted to use or work with a surrogate, excuse me, because she was concerned about pregnancy hurting her career. Even though potentially some of those women, and I can't speak for them, I don't know their circumstances, might have opted for surrogacy because of a medical issue or maybe not. I've read mixed reports on whether anyone can work with a surrogate. So can you only work with a surrogate if you're not able to conceive yourself or have a medical issue? Which one is correct? Yeah, it's at best, it's a gray area. It's a source of debate in and outside the surrogacy industry. And the short answer is, it depends. And it depends on the IVF clinic. Some clinics will

only allow you to work with a surrogate if you have a medical need to do so. Now, the bar for medical need can be relatively low. It doesn't mean that you absolutely cannot carry a pregnancy, but there may be some condition you have that could threaten your own health or the baby's health. So, you know, there's just the question mark of that could be like, okay, that's fine. Surrogate seems fine. So the, the crux of the matter is this, is surrogacy is a choice by the intended parents, as well as a choice by the surrogate, regardless of what brings them to it. And agencies like our own may have philosophies or guidelines on this. And what we generally follow is, is there a surrogate out there that you're willing to carry for you? And we leave it up to her to do

so, right? So if you come to us and you say, listen, I could totally carry a pregnancy. I don't even work. I've got tons of money. I just want to be, you may not find a surrogate that would want to match with you, right? Because she really has it in her heart to help somebody who really needs this. Now, you could take another argument, which is men, they don't carry pregnancies. If a single man decided to use a surrogate, nobody would bat an eye, right? He would continue working and there would be no impact on his own careers. So you can look at it from that side. Whereas if a woman goes off of work, and this is a huge topic of conversation all over the world, sports and everything else, which is what happens when a woman has to interrupt her career to have a pregnancy. So usually, by the way, when her career is on the up, she's hitting a stride just as a footnote.

Yeah, well, exactly. It's a footnote. Yeah, well, exactly. It's a great point. And also, imagine a woman who runs her own company. And what would happen if something happened to her in the pregnancy, or if she were disabled by the pregnancy or anything like this? In other words, if she's the sole resource of her family's income, and she decides, you know what, using a surrogate is going to allow me to maintain that and preserve that and still have a child while employing other people. So it's not such an easy argument to decide upon. People have opinions for sure, and they differ within our community and the industry. But we don't get a lot of it, frankly. We really don't get a lot of people saying,

I could totally carry a pregnancy and I just don't want to. In fact, we don't really ever have that. It's usually some other mitigating factor. And mental health concerns, I'm assuming, would be classified like any other health concern? Yeah. I mean, you have a number of different things. I mean, the amount of people who suffer from anxiety and depression but manage it, but that would be exacerbated by pregnancy and the hormones and all these types of things. I mean, you know, I think we're in a society now where we need to have, it's got to be this, or it's got to be that, and everything in the middle is sort of thrown out as an option. And that's the work that we do in this industry is try to preserve an ethical and moral environment,

but also look at it. And that kind of starts with how we began as a company where they just were saying, listen, if you're a gay man, single man, you can't do this. The baby has to have a mother, so to speak. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you meet me back here tomorrow

for the second part of my discussion with Tio. In tomorrow's episode, you'll hear more about the financial implications for surrogates, Tio's advice on how to talk to your child about surrogacy, and financial resources for folks considering surrogacy. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers are Nikki Etor and Will Pearson. Our mascots are Penny and Mimsy. Huge thanks to OG Money Rehab team Michelle Lanz for her development work, Catherine Law for her production and writing magic, and Brandon Dickert for his editing, engineering and sound design. And as always, thanks to you

for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.