What happens if a surrogate changes jobs or loses a job and insurance during the surrogacy journey?

Learn the answer to this week's user-submitted question about surrogacy in this week's installment of Ask a Surrogacy Expert! Have a question about surrogacy that you'd like answered? Submit it at brightfuturesfamilies.com/ask

Hey everyone, it is Jennifer White, CEO of Bright Futures Families Surrogacy, with this week's Ask Question, which is a little convoluted in somebody how they presented it to me, so I'll do my best. The question is, if a gestational carrier loses her job or changes job, which means she loses her health insurance, which is considered a life event, does she have to use cobra? So the expense of COBRA through her previous policy, or can she take out an ACA plan or utilize her new insurance where she's going to if she's changing jobs, super complex. It really will be case to case dependent. But the good news is it is a life event. So that means that she can potentially take out an ACA policy. As to whether or not she is required to use cobra. That's something you really want to turn and look at the contract that was written directly between the parties. I would never want to sit here and say to you, oh yeah, no, it's totally fine, she never has to use COBRA if she has other alternatives. Because I'm not inside of your specific legal agreement and we want to make sure that you're in compliance there. The best advice I can give is if that's happening, notify your agency, notify your intended parents as early as possible because then they can jump in and have plenty of time or as much time as possible to really help dig out some of those solutions because a lot of them are time dependent. And obviously if you're coming up to the end of a month and things like that, you want to make sure that you have continuous coverage of health insurance. And so sometimes it could be a partial scramble of making sure that you have an ACA plan that covers for a month or two while you get settled in your new job and it picks up and things like that. So really depend on and lean on your agency to help advise if you are having a major life change like that regarding your insurance. So hope that helps.