No Irish court will order a surrogate to hand over a child on foot of a contract. That is the correct position and it is not going to change — consent to relinquishing a child is not something the law treats as bindable in advance. Which does not make the agreement pointless. It makes it a different kind of document.
What the Document Is Actually For
It records what everyone understood and intended at a time when relations were good and nobody was under pressure. It evidences that both sides received independent legal advice — which matters if a court ever considers the arrangement, and matters more once the 2024 Act is commenced. It forces the conversations people avoid until they become crises. And it may one day be a document your child wants to read. What belongs in it is therefore more about process than outcome: who the parties are and what each intends; the genetic position, expressly; antenatal care, screening decisions and who attends what; what happens in the event of complications, a multiple pregnancy or a difficult diagnosis — the conversations nobody wants and everybody needs; contact during pregnancy and afterwards, and what each side honestly expects that to look like in a year and in ten; expenses, recorded carefully and confined to what is permissible; what everyone will tell the child, and when; and the steps each side will take afterwards on registration, parentage and guardianship. It is a record of shared understanding, not a set of obligations enforceable against a woman’s body.
Two Solicitors, Always — and Who Pays for Hers
One solicitor cannot act for everyone, and any arrangement in which that is proposed should be treated as a serious warning sign. The interests are genuinely different and occasionally opposed. A surrogate is being asked to undertake a pregnancy and ultimately to relinquish a child of whom she will be the legal mother; she is entitled to a lawyer whose only duty is to her and who is free to advise her against the arrangement entirely. Independent advice for both sides is contemplated by the Act itself, and it is right in principle regardless of commencement. This firm acts for one side only in any arrangement. On fees: the intending parents commonly pay for the surrogate’s advice, which is normal and permissible — the Act, in prohibiting commercial surrogacy, treats legal fees as among the payments that may properly be made. But paying for her advice does not purchase it: her solicitor acts for her alone, and that should be explicit in writing at the outset. A surrogate sent to a solicitor chosen and instructed by the intending parents has not had independent advice in any meaningful sense, whatever the file records. When the Act commences, agreements move inside a regulated process — AHRRA pre-approval before treatment, gestational only, genetic link, non-commercial, mandatory counselling — so anyone drafting now should build toward those requirements rather than needlessly fall outside them if commencement arrives mid-journey.
An Agreement Being Drafted, or Proposed to You?
Whether you are an intending parent or a surrogate, you are entitled to your own solicitor and to advice that is unambiguously yours - including the advice not to proceed.
Call 01 5827148