Am I (as the surrogate) related to the child? Do I have parental rights?

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

Hi, it's Janelle Ibarra at Bright Futures Families Surrogacy with our Ask a Surrogacy Expert question, which is: Am I, as the surrogate, related to the child and do I have parental rights? So at Bright Futures Families, we only do gestational surrogacy, which is where the egg is, not that of the gestational carrier surrogate, so it comes from the intended mother or it's a donor egg. That said, you do not have any parental rights to the child, and there's a lot of paperwork done ahead of time. Each party needs to have independent legal representation to ensure that there is parentage established prior to the birth of the child, which starts pretty early on in the pregnancy. Second trimester. Ish. Just to make sure that things are squared away so that by the time of birth it's clear who that baby belongs to, which would not be the surrogate. If you have any questions, please let us know.