How to Choose a Surrogacy Agency: The Honest Questions Nobody Tells You to Ask

I have been in this field since I was four years old.

My mom founded this agency, and I grew up inside it. I have sat with intended parents on the hardest days of their lives and the very best ones. I have seen this industry from every seat at the table, and I am going to tell you something most agencies will not.

Choosing a surrogacy agency is one of the biggest decisions you will ever make, and almost nobody teaches you how to do it well. So let me.

First, the truth about this industry

The last several years were hard on surrogacy as a whole. COVID upended timelines, clinics, borders, and staffing across every agency in this space, not just one. Costs shifted. Communication got harder. Some families waited far longer than anyone wanted them to.

I am not going to pretend none of that happened, because you deserve honesty, and because a good agency is one that learned from those years instead of hiding from them. What matters now is not that the industry hit turbulence. What matters is which agencies came out the other side stronger, with better systems, and a deeper commitment to the people who trust them.

That is the lens I want to give you. Not fear. Discernment.

The questions that actually tell you the truth

Anyone can have a beautiful website and a warm phone call. Here is how you look underneath that.

Ask how they handle money, in writing. A trustworthy agency can explain exactly where your funds go, how they are held, when they are disbursed, and what happens if a journey pauses or changes course. You want clarity, not vibes. Ask for it in writing and read it carefully. This is the single most important area to understand before you sign anything, with any agency.

Ask who communicates with you, and how often. So much heartache in this field comes down to silence. Ask who your point of contact will be, how quickly they respond, and what happens if that person is unavailable. A real agency has coverage and systems so that you are never left in the dark, no matter what.

Ask what happens when something goes wrong. Because sometimes it does, with any agency, in any journey. The question is not whether an agency has ever hit a bump. It is whether they own it, communicate through it, and have a plan. Ask them directly: tell me about a journey that got complicated and how you handled it. Listen for accountability, not a sales pitch.

Ask about their clinic and cross-border experience. If your embryos are at a specific clinic, or in another country, ask how many journeys they have actually run with that exact setup. Not "we can do it." How many have they done. Experience is the difference between a smooth road and a stressful one.

Ask to speak to families and surrogates who worked with them. Real, named people who will get on a call with you. This is where the truth lives, in the voices of the people who have been through it.

On reviews and what you read online

Here is my honest guidance, from someone who has watched this industry for over three decades.

Read everything. Then weigh it. A named person, on a call with you, sharing their real experience, tells you far more than an anonymous post ever can. That is true for praise and it is true for criticism. Anonymous accounts, on every side of every agency, are the least reliable thing on the internet, and the internet will run with anything.

So do not outsource your decision to a comment section. Do the work. Ask the hard questions above. Talk to real people. Trust what you see with your own eyes when you sit across from someone and ask them to be honest with you.

The families who choose well are almost never the ones who read the most posts. They are the ones who asked the best questions.

Do not take my word for it either

By my own argument above, I should not ask you to take these as proof. Take them as a starting point, then ask us to put you on a call with the people who wrote them.

Each of these speaks to one of the questions above. Julien scrutinized every bill. Sharron weighed the criticism she found online and drew her own conclusion. L and A have come back a decade later. Vicky has offered to talk to you herself.

Where we stand

We have spent more than thirty years bringing families together, and we are building the next chapter with more intention, better systems, and a deeper commitment to the people who trust us than ever before. We have lived this work from every angle, as an agency, as an egg donor, and as a family that grew up inside this field. It is not just what we do. It is who we are.

If you are trying to choose well, ask us every single one of the questions above. We will answer all of them, honestly, because that is exactly how you should be treated by anyone you are about to trust with the most important journey of your life.

From hope to heartbeat to home.