Surrogacy in Georgia: Timeframes & Surrogate Mother Waiting Time

Intended parents deserve the best possible service, after years of trying to conceive naturally or by other means, they expect a good and time-efficient service. Surrogacy is a very long process in itself. Therefore, the process of matching intended parents with a surrogate should not take very long. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

Surrogacy in Georgia has become a hot topic in recent months and years, especially after the war in Ukraine put an end to one of the most internationally known surrogacy destinations.

Dozens of agencies and clinics have relocated their activities from Ukraine to Georgia, with the opening of new facilities and the transport of hundreds of embryos to new storage locations.

Obviously, this new situation created an acute shortage of surrogates in the Georgian market. To get an idea of the shortage, there are clients who are “forgotten” for up to a year after signing a contract, many of whom have written to us or visited us to ask for a surrogate mother after their clinics or agencies had postponed the start of the process for a long time. It is worth remembering that Georgia is a country of less than 4 million inhabitants, while Ukraine had a pre-war population of almost 10 times that number. It is very difficult for a small country to absorb such a huge and sudden demand for surrogate mothers.

Many prospective clients do not ask about the time it takes to be matched with a surrogate, they simply believe that there are plenty of surrogates out there ready to sign a contract. This isn’t the case. Each surrogate is a treasure because there are few of them and even fewer who are completely healthy and ready to start a programme.

The fee of a surrogacy agency mainly covers the process of finding, testing and matching a surrogate with the intended parents. Depending on the agency, the fee may also cover monitoring the pregnancy, providing information to clients, organizing legal matters and coordinating the birth of the child.

Therefore, the very reason for the existence of a surrogacy agency is to find a good surrogate mother, and sometimes egg donors, who can help the intended parents fulfil their dream of having a child in their family.

A responsive and reputable surrogacy agency will write specific timeframes into the contract, specifying the time needed to find a surrogate mother and to carry out the first (or next) embryo transfer. Intended parents must be very careful not to sign contracts without a specific timeframe, as this can be used by the agency and especially the clinic to postpone the process or change the conditions once the process is underway.

At Surrogacybypons, we set a clear deadline for the first embryo transfer to take place after the contract is signed, which is no more than 3.5 months, and this has been the case since our company was founded. The maximum time between embryo transfers is also set at 3.5 months.

The intended parents must also be aware that in the current conditions, spring 2023, there is an acute shortage of surrogate mothers in Georgia, many agencies and clinics bring surrogate mothers from other countries and in certain cases the surrogate mother returns to her country of origin until the 6th month of pregnancy, time during which she is completely unsupervised and there is even a risk that she never comes back to Georgia.

Surrogacybypons guarantees its clients a surrogate mother who will be under constant supervision throughout the pregnancy. We also guarantee that the surrogate mother will not disappear to another country.

We have clearly defined duties and obligations during and after the birth of the child. Our legal team will supervise the signing of the surrogacy contract, the issuing of the birth certificate and provide the intended parents with all the necessary documents to obtain their baby’s passport at their respective consulates.

To be more precise, not only do we have a guarantee of specific time frames, but we also have a clear set of legal services that will be provided in each case. According to our contract with the intended parents, the legal assistance provided will consist of the following services:

Legal assistance services:

a) Issuing a power of attorney by the intended parents in the name of their representative in Georgia.

b) Preparation and signing of the surrogacy contract between the intended parents and the surrogate mother.

c) Preparation and signing of a donor contract between the intended parents and an egg donor/sperm donor, if requested by the intended parents.

d) Obtaining the birth certificate of the child(ren).

e) Legal assistance at the Embassy/Consulate of the intended parents or other state institutions to obtain the passport/travel documents for the child(ren). The assistance will be given in the form of advice and provision of the necessary documents so that the intended parents can apply for the citizenship of the future child(ren) on their own.

Throughout more than 5 years of our existence, we have never delayed the provision of a surrogate mother to a couple due to lack of surrogates, we simply refuse cases if the demand is too high and only accept cases for which we can provide a surrogate mother with 100% certainty.

Our agency fee covers not only a basic surrogate matching and coordination service, but also invaluable legal support and time efficiency.