Do Surrogates Get Paid If They Miscarry? | Worldwide Surrogacy Specialists

Why surrogates are paid when a pregnancy ends

Compensation in surrogacy is not payment for a baby. It is payment for medical risk, medication, procedures, appointments, time away from work, and the months your body is committed to someone else's family. New York permits it "based on medical risks, physical discomfort, inconvenience and the responsibilities they are undertaking," and in the same section forbids payment for relinquishing parental rights (N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act § 581-502). The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, whose standards Worldwide Surrogacy follows in screening, says it plainly: compensation "should not be contingent on the birth of a healthy child" (ASRM Ethics Committee, 2023). If it were, a loss would mean nothing was owed.

How base compensation is earned in stages

Several payments reach you before there is a pregnancy at all, and base compensation itself arrives in monthly installments across the pregnancy, beginning when a blood test confirms the pregnancy rather than as a lump sum at the end. Every payment, with what triggers it, is on when and how surrogates are paid.

Lawyers call the mechanism vesting: reaching a defined stage is what makes the next portion of the money yours, and what you have reached, you have earned. What is owed when a journey ends at a stage is below.

What you are paid if the journey ends, stage by stage

If a cycle is canceled, you keep your $500 medical clearance bonus, your $500 contract signing bonus, your $500 medical start fee, every monthly allowance paid to that point, and your travel and lost wages for screening. The schedule's $500 canceled cycle fee applies where the cycle is canceled after the final lining check.
If a transfer does not result in a pregnancy, you keep all of the above plus $1,000 for that transfer.
If the pregnancy ends before a heartbeat is confirmed, you keep all of the above. Base compensation has not begun at that point, because it starts once a pregnancy is confirmed.
If the pregnancy ends after a heartbeat is confirmed, you keep all of the above plus every base installment paid to that point.
If the pregnancy ends in a stillbirth, you keep all of the above plus every base installment paid up to that point.
If the pregnancy is ended for medical reasons, you keep all of the above plus a $2,000 additional payment for the procedure.

At Worldwide Surrogacy the principle is simple: you are compensated for your time and for what you carry, not for a baby. Every payment you have already received is yours. If a transfer does not work, or a pregnancy ends, nothing is returned and nothing is deducted from what you are owed.

Your compensation is fully earned at a point set in your own agreement, most often between 30 and 32 weeks. Some surrogates negotiate that point earlier and some intended parents ask for later, and it is one of the terms your own attorney goes through with you. From that point your full base is earned regardless of how the pregnancy ends. Before it, everything already paid to you is still yours to keep.

The earliest stages are covered by the same principle. If a transfer does not result in a pregnancy, every fee already paid to you is yours. If a pregnancy ends before a heartbeat is found, the first installment is usually split so that half has already been paid at the positive pregnancy test, and that half is yours as well.

If a cycle is canceled before the transfer

The schedule carries a $500 canceled cycle payment where the cycle is canceled after the final lining check, and a $500 mock cycle payment, and the medication, monitoring and travel that got you there were the intended parents' cost. If the agreement ends here and it is governed by Connecticut law, the statute settles two things people worry about: the intended parents remain responsible for reimbursable expenses you incurred to that date, and, fraud aside, you are not liable to them for a penalty, for their screening costs, or for liquidated damages (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 46b-528).

If the transfer does not result in a pregnancy

The transfer fee is $1,000 per embryo transfer, so a second transfer pays a second $1,000. Your allowance continues while the agreement is in force. How many transfers you and the intended parents will attempt is set in your agreement, and a Worldwide Surrogacy agreement typically provides for three.

We have written separately about what happens after a failed embryo transfer.

If the pregnancy ends before a heartbeat is confirmed

Base compensation has not started, because it begins once a pregnancy is confirmed. What has been paid is the start payment, the allowance, the transfer fee and any procedure payments. If you need a D&C or D&E, the schedule carries $500 for it, and the procedure itself is a medical cost the intended parents cover.

An early loss is not a failure to perform. Connecticut's statute, for example, describes the surrogate as someone who the person acting as surrogate "agrees to attempt to become pregnant by means of assisted reproduction" (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 46b-524).

If the pregnancy ends after a heartbeat is confirmed

Every installment you have received was payment for a stage you reached and risk you had already taken on. What happens to the installments not yet paid is set out above. Your medical care is not in question: it continues to be covered, and the choices about it remain yours.

If the pregnancy ends in a stillbirth

New York's statute is unusually explicit about what follows. It requires your health insurance, paid for by the intended parents, to cover you for twelve months after a birth, a stillbirth, a miscarriage or a termination (N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act § 581-604), requires the $750,000 life insurance policy to run for the same twelve months (§ 581-606), and permits supplemental compensation for complications and lost wages for up to twelve months after any of them (§ 581-502). Worldwide Surrogacy assists with procuring the policy, and how long it runs follows the law of the state where your match takes place. New York sets a term. Most states do not, and there the term is set in your agreement. Ask when yours attaches and when it ends, and get the answer in writing before your transfer.

If the pregnancy has to be ended for medical reasons

The decision is yours, and it is a right rather than a courtesy. New York and Connecticut both write it into their surrogacy statutes. New York gives a person acting as surrogate "the right to make all health and welfare decisions regarding them-self and their pregnancy... whether to terminate or continue the pregnancy" (N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act § 581-602). Connecticut voids the contract language outright: an agreement "shall not infringe upon the right of the person acting as surrogate to autonomy in medical decision making," and any waiver is "void as against public policy" (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 46b-524).

You have complete bodily autonomy throughout, and you choose your own medical providers. The schedule carries a $2,000 additional payment where this procedure happens. It is compensation for an additional invasive procedure and the recovery that follows it, not a payment for a decision.

Who pays for your medical care, and whether you can be left with a bill

The answer does not change by stage. The intended parents are responsible for the medical costs of the pregnancy and the IVF treatment, including where it ends in a loss, and if your own policy does not cover surrogacy, a policy is provided at no cost to you. They pay the premiums and they carry what insurance does not: Connecticut requires the agreement to provide for "all uncovered medical expenses" (§ 46b-524), and New York requires co-payments, deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs to be covered or reimbursed, with coverage running twelve months past the end of the pregnancy however it ends (§ 581-604).

Worldwide Surrogacy does not hold escrow funds. Intended parents are referred to reputable escrow agencies, and in Connecticut compensation must be placed in escrow before any medical procedure begins (§ 46b-523), which is the provision that answers "what if they simply stop paying?" We have written more on how surrogacy escrow protects your money.

In states with no statute on this, every one of these protections comes from your agreement. Two things to check on your own policy before you sign: whether it contains a surrogacy exclusion, and what it says about a pregnancy that ends early. Our guide to medical insurance options for surrogacy covers what to look for.

What happens to the monthly allowance

The $350 monthly allowance is not part of base compensation and does not run on the same trigger. It begins when the Gestational Surrogacy Agreement is signed and the published schedule runs it "until four weeks after delivery, or earlier if your contract ends for any reason." What that last clause means in each situation is set out above.

Whether you can try again, and what that means for your compensation

You decide, and your doctor decides with you. A loss does not automatically end an agreement or automatically continue it. Connecticut, for example, lets a party end the agreement after a transfer that does not result in pregnancy, before the next transfer (§ 46b-528). Each embryo transfer carries its own $1,000 payment, so another attempt is paid as its own attempt. Worldwide Surrogacy works with surrogates who carry more than once, and its founder has written about second journeys directly: some intended parents ask the same surrogate to carry again, and where she would rather not, the agency matches them with someone else. A new journey after an agreement has ended is a new agreement, and an experienced surrogate is offered a higher base for it. Your agreement will typically provide for up to three transfer attempts, and the same Gestational Surrogacy Agreement covers them. If a first or second transfer does not result in a pregnancy, you do not need a new agreement to try again.

If you decide not to continue, that decision is respected. Any pregnancy may impact future fertility, which is part of why this is a conversation with your own obstetrician rather than with an agency.

What to ask your own attorney before you sign

You choose your own attorney, and the intended parents pay for that representation. Worldwide Surrogacy supervises the legal work on a journey; your attorney represents you, and reviews the agreement and the compensation terms with you. These are the questions to take to your attorney:

What is paid if a transfer does not take, and what is paid if the pregnancy ends at each stage after that?
Is there any provision requiring me to repay compensation already paid, in any circumstance?
Does the monthly allowance continue after a loss, and for how long?
How long does my health insurance run after a pregnancy ends, and when does the life insurance policy start and end?

Support after a loss

Every case manager at Worldwide Surrogacy has been a surrogate herself, so the person you call has carried for someone else and knows the process from the inside. The published schedule carries a $1,000 payment for psychological counseling and support during pregnancy and after birth. How that support is arranged after a loss is handled case by case rather than by a fixed rule, so ask your case manager what is available to you and for how long.

If you are reading this because it has already happened to you, call your own doctor first and your case manager next. We have also gathered support resources for surrogates.