Episode 158 – Kate Cherry – Lawyer

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you

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Welcome to Surrogacy Australia’s podcast series. I’m your host Anna McKie. Thank you for sharing your time to listen to this episode. These recordings are from the regular one-hour free webinars that I run, which I invite you to attend if you haven’t already. They take you through how surrogacy works in Australia, including how to find a surrogate or intended parents, there are opportunities to ask questions, and you hear from a co-host each time about their own journey.

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This episode recorded in June, 2026 was different to the standard webinars as it featured lawyer Kate Cherry. If you’d like to arrange your own session with Kate, you can find her on her firm’s website, cherrylaw.com.au. In this episode, we mentioned SASS, which is Surrogacy Australia Support Service, which I manage. If you’re looking for more individualized support to be connected with a mentor and as IPs, intended parents, to be potentially connected with a surrogate,

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head to Surrogacy Australia’s website to register. SASS is also open to teams who know each other before surrogacy and they would join for the mentorship, agency support for the IPs and surrogate and have me as your guide. You might think of me as your Siri for surrogacy or as other people in our village, our community are calling me your Chat GPT. I hope you enjoy this episode and please reach out to myself or Kate if you have further questions.

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Hello everyone and welcome to Surrogacy Australia’s webinar. My name is Anna McKay and I gave birth as an altruistic surrogate about five and a half years ago. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land upon which we are recording, listening and living on and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. Tonight, my co-host is Kate Cherry from Cherry Family Law in Brisbane.

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Welcome, Kate. Thank you. Thanks, Anna. I’ll tell you a little bit about Kate. So she has a passion for family law, having worked almost exclusively in the area since entering the legal profession in 2000 and thereafter at the High Court of Australia. Whether it be in relation to parenting or property related issues, Kate has devoted her legal career to date to becoming a well-respected Brisbane based family lawyer, known for both her genuine compassion for her clients and her vitality as an advocate for their legal interests. Kate is an accredited independent children’s lawyer and is regularly appointed in the Federal Circuit

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Court and Family Court to represent the interests of children affected by significant parental conflict and or dysfunction. And Kate is obviously a

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a well-respected and very experienced lawyer in the surrogacy world. And so that’s why she’s joining us here tonight to share some information and answer questions. Wonderful. All right, so I’ll do a few bits of housekeeping first. So I run these webinars regularly on a Wednesday night. They usually have a focus for IPs, intended parents, one week and then a surrogate focus the next. I’m joined by a co-host each time who’s either a surrogate or a parent through surrogacy. So that could be a gay dad or a mom.

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So there’ll be opportunities to ask questions tonight. You can enter them in the Q and A box that you’ll find at the edge of your screen somewhere. You can choose for them to be anonymous if you prefer. There’s also a chat section. You might say, hi, we’re IPs or parents from Brisbane or surrogate from wherever, but you’re very welcome to remain anonymous. So in terms of who I anticipate might be with us tonight, you might be IPs who are new to surrogacy and you’re looking for a surrogate, or you might have formed a team. might be a surrogate and you might be new or experienced. a welcome to everyone there. Alex and Carlo have joined us in the chat and they’re part of the reason why we’ve got

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Kate here tonight when they hosted the awards for the surrogacy and donation in Brisbane last year. That was the second year and so that’s how Kate and I connected. So they’re here to cheer us on. Let me take you through a brief summary how surrogacy works in Australia but it’s only very brief and so if you want the full rundown you need to come to a regular webinar.

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That’s the steps that we’re going to go through tonight. But first of all, if you are looking for more links and resources, you can find them on our Surrogacy Australia website in the webinar section and in the link called further reading. And then there’s a list of links you might like to work your way through. so Kate can be found on her website, cherrylaw.com.au or you could Google her name with lawyer and she’ll pop up.

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So the steps that you need to go through, again, this is a very quick summary. These are assuming you find a surrogate. If you haven’t found a surrogate, join me in a regular webinar. And also these webinars are converted into a podcast series and a YouTube recording. So I’m sure you’ve all got your phones in your hands and I’m a high school math teacher as mother job and I like to issue homework. So I’d love for you to subscribe to that series, Surrogacy Australia Conversations.

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and this episode will be coming out probably Monday or very soon. Okay, so your options for finding a surrogate is either a known surrogate by telling friends and family that you need one or finding an unknown surrogate means you’ve either joined an online group or have joined SASS, which stands for Surrogacy Australia Support Service, which I run. And so to be eligible to engage with a surrogate, you either need to not have a uterus, so be a same-sex male couple or a single man.

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because you were born without a uterus or have had a hysterectomy or have been advised by a specialist that carrying a pregnancy is too great a risk to yourself or the baby. In terms of surrogate eligibility, it’s just to check that they’re and healthy enough to carry another pregnancy basically. And then once you have a team, you’ll go through counseling and legals and that needs to be done before pregnancy attempts and you’re also engaging with an IVF clinic. So that’s roughly the steps, but then obviously there are a few stages of the legal work and so that’s what we’re going to go through tonight. These are the stages, so once you’ve completed

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to them and the IVF clinics approved you aim for pregnancy and once baby’s born. Some states have what’s called relinquishment counseling, New South Wales and Queensland around six weeks after birth. And that’s required before the parentage order. Okay, I went as fast as I could there. So we’re gonna go into what I and sort of Kate have roughly see as the different stages you could categorize this in here. And so I’ll read this out and Kate will give us a bit of a summary for each section.

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So Kate, so some people might say, you we’re looking for a surrogate or we’ve recently had an offer from someone to be a surrogate. When should we see a lawyer? What should we look for in a surrogacy lawyer? Both for the IPs and the surrogate. And are you able to be the lawyer for us or our surrogate if we live interstate? Yeah, sure. No worries. And firstly, hi to Alex and Carlo. Hope you guys are well and your little ones doing really well. So in terms of looking for a lawyer, I think what you need to be doing is looking for someone who has some experience in surrogacy. That sounds really obvious, but despite surrogacy,

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being around and legal in Australia and different jurisdictions since about 2010, it’s still really only a small pool of lawyers that actually deal with it a lot. And so if you were to go off to your kind of regular family lawyer, for example, who hasn’t necessarily got experience in surrogacy law, I’m sure they could work it out, but it tends to cost you a lot more as they take the time to work it out. when you just saw somebody who specialises in it, that can be a good way of keeping your costs down as well as having an expert look at it for you. If it was me, I’d be looking for a lawyer once you basically

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found a surrogate. I mean you can always go and see someone beforehand so that you can work out or be told basically what are the requirements but once you’ve found your surrogate you should definitely go and speak to a lawyer and see what the requirements are so that you don’t do anything kind of out of step or that doesn’t line up with the prerequisites in the legislation. The last dot point there is very relevant because we do have different jurisdictions, so different laws in each jurisdiction I should say around Australia, it is important that the lawyer that you see understands the requirements in the state or territory that

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the baby’s going to be born in because that’s where the parent and daughter is likely to be, will be made. In some cases you have matters where you might have intended parents and surrogates in different states and you know there’s a chance that a child could be born in one of either of those states so you want to have somebody who knows the requirements across both jurisdictions. But again if you just come back to finding someone who specializes in surrogacy law they’ll be aware of all of that. There are a few different requirements in different states for different things such as the relinquishment counseling that you just mentioned Anna.

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It doesn’t apply in all states. That’s just one example. Exactly, Cs for me in South Australia, we didn’t have to go through that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We don’t actually have.

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relinquishment counselling in Queensland, but we do have a second round of counselling, but that’s for the surrogacy guidance report. But it’s a little bit different to the relinquishment counselling in New South Wales. But yeah, that’s just another example of making sure you get the right legal advice. Yes. Good point. And oh, I wonder in our working careers, Kate, if we will see a uniformity of laws. I hope so. hope so. Yes. Well, that just reminds you, if anyone’s got specific questions about any of that, feel free to type them in and we’ll either answer them if they’re relevant to the section that we’re up to or we’ll save them to the end.

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Okay, so then we’ve got the team. So we have a surrogacy team and we’re getting ready to do the counseling and the legal parts of surrogacy. And the common questions people ask are things like, what’s the next step? So is that in terms of finding two lawyers?

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does or should an agreement cover? What are the reasonable expenses that we can cover for our surrogate? And are those agreements enforceable? Yeah, sure. So with the finding two lawyers, what we find when we get new inquiries, we all always pretty much are asked, who can I send my surrogate to or who, you know, who can the other party go and see? just because we work with a lot of lawyers, like the same lawyers in different matters, we generally refer them to those people because we know they won’t attempt to reinvent the wheel and increase costs and things like that.

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But yeah, you definitely need two lawyers. That’s a very important point because you must have independent legal advice on each side. So sometimes we get asked if we can advise everyone. We definitely cannot. There must be two lawyers. The agreements going to cover, well, the agreements come in all different shapes and sizes actually. We have ones that we see that come, I think, from the internet, which are very bare and basic.

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We have kind of a midline style of arrangement which covers, I think, all the things that it needs to and then we have the really extravagant ones that probably go a bit too far. And this ties in with the last point on your slide there which is, these agreements enforceable? Well, I’m not sure what people know or what they don’t know. That’s why they’re at the webinar, I guess, but…

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Agreements, they’re not enforceable. The only part about the agreements which is enforceable is the part in there that says that the intended parents will actually cover the costs of the surrogate provided that they actually relinquish the child and then transfer parentage at the end of the entire journey. The rest of the agreement is really just a statement of everyone’s mutual intentions going into the surrogacy journey. So what I think is important to cover in it is clearly outlining

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what everybody will need to do at every part of the journey. So your pre-surrogacy counselling, getting your legal advice, making sure you have a bit of preamble in there which would satisfy the court that…

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the group are eligible for surrogacy in the first place. And then, you know, what you would do post-birth in terms of everybody signing whatever is required to go off to the children’s court or the Supreme Court or whatever the court is in whichever state you’re in. And you’ll do all things as required in that jurisdiction to get that parentage order across the line. So we spell those out in our agreements, depending on which state it is. Again, though, none of that’s enforceable, obviously. So the laws in all of the states and territories recognize that

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at any time really any of the parties could terminate the agreement even after a pregnancy. That’s a whole other issue. oh can talk about at length but yeah they’re not enforceable but they are there and they’re admissible though if you were to fall into a dispute at a later date within the group it is still a document that can be tended in court to show that

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court what everybody had intended moving into the surrogacy arrangement. So although they’re not enforceable, they’re so very important and they’re required in any event under the relevant acts around the country so that you can get your parentage order ultimately. Definitely. I’d assume them as a lawyer and because teams are also doing counselling and they’re writing up a report there, there’s probably a bit of crossover that happens. You probably end up finding your part counsellor. You know, there’s sometimes a bit of fear in terms of writing these legal agreements. What can I put in there? But it really is so much down to trust, isn’t it?

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And that’s what I was, I guess I was hinting at in the last slide. Some of these arrangements that come out are so long, they can be 40 or 50 pages with all these different things that the surrogate will and will not do, which are just unenforceable. At the end of the day, does come down to having significant trust in your surrogate and their partner. So. Yeah, absolutely. So then we assume the legal paperwork is done. People got pregnant, navigated the pregnancy and birth, babies arrived, and then we do the legal work at the end. So the parentage order, because if people may or may not know,

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oh the name of the surrogate and her partner she has one go down on the first birth certificate currently as it is in Australia and so this stage three of the legal work we’ve got there

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what I’ve got written down says, we’ve had a baby through surrogacy, what are the next steps? So as IPs, when if ever, do we get our names on the birth certificate? Do we need to keep all of our receipts for surrogacy related expenses for the parentage order? And is anyone ever denied a parentage order? And if so, why? Yeah, sure. I always kind of tend to say to my clients that I think the legal side of things with surrogacy in Australia is fairly straightforward. And as long as you’ve got great advice from the start and you follow everything in terms of how the legislation steps out the step,

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can’t be denied a parentage order. If you do what the Act tell you you need to do, it’s not like the judge has discretion to say, I’m not going to let you have a parentage order.

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So what happens is little one is born and yes the birth mum and her partner if any go on the initial birth certificate. So then what we need to do in all the different states and territories is get a parentage order and then once we have that we register that with the registry of births, deaths and marriages in the state in which the child is born and then that registry will then issue a new certificate with both intended parents names on the certificate and the

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The original certificate will go into a sealed register, never really to be seen again. Can be accessed by the child if they wish when they’re 18 or by the parents. The new birth certificate is what will be for all intents and purposes that little one’s birth certificate. And to get that, as I said, you just need to follow the steps that are set out in the legislation in the different jurisdictions. Again, there’s a couple of different requirements in each different state. Some states require an appearance in court, some states don’t. So in New South Wales, you don’t go to court, for example. Whereas in Queensland, we all come along to court and have a nice little almost

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ceremonial appearance and the judges really love making parentage orders. Yes, in South Australia, yes. Yeah, right. And then Western Australia, think they go to the, well, I know they go to the to family court of Western Australia in that jurisdiction to have their orders made. In the second point you make there, I get asked this all the time, do we need to keep receipts for surrogacy related expenses? The short answer is no. What the legislation requires, well, let’s use Queensland, for example, but it is pretty much the same around Australia. Surrogacy costs, the only things can be reimbursed are expenses.

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that the surrogate incurs strictly as a result of the pregnancy and the birth. So as long as you’re reimbursing those expenses, there can be no difficulty. And what we do when we go for our parentage order to satisfy the court that that requirement has been met, is we simply have everyone signing up in their affidavits to statements that there have been no payments other than permissible surrogacy costs allowed under the various acts. And really the easy rule of thumb is would they have incurred this expense but for the pregnancy or birth? If they make that requirement, it’s permissible.

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So usually that’s what we do is we put a state in our affidavit saying that that’s what’s occurred. There’s no commercial payment and that’s all that’s required. I’ve never had a court ask me for proof of expenditure. I’ve had a matter where it was actually suspected that there were other payments made and one of the parties brought that to the court’s attention and actually wanted the court to look into it. But it never, the court didn’t do it. They kind of put it in the too hard basket and adjourned the matter off for some other kind of dispute resolution. But that would have been an interesting case to see.

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dealt with it because there was certainly some concerns that there was some extra payments made. And had that been proven and had, you know, going on to your next point. um

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Perhaps in that case, a parentage order might not have been made, but I’ve never had one that’s been denied. Yes, and I’ve been around this community for, probably nine years now. No, I haven’t seen them denied either. And I think that’s one thing that’s appealing to do surrogacy in Australia is eventually you do get both of your names on that birth certificate. As a surrogate, I’ve actually got a copy of the original from when I birthed Baker.

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as opposed to overseas surrogacy, things can be slightly different there. Okay, and then so we might just move on to some general concerns that are classic questions that we might get asked from time to time. IP sometimes say, you know, we’re new to surrogacy and some of the things we’re concerned about are, will the surrogate ask for money? Are we allowed to buy our surrogate a gift? What are the common pitfalls to be wary of? And what if the surrogate wants to keep the baby? This financial…

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concern or this question about money and and the like is something that does come up every now and then and which does cause me some concern.

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sometimes for, I say this respectfully, but for the motivation of some surrogates, at times there is, I’ve seen it, pressure placed upon intended parents to make various payments, which I personally would not say fall within permissible surrogacy costs as defined in the legislation. on the other side of the coin, you’ve got the intended parents obviously wanting to do whatever they need to do to keep their surrogate happy and baby happy and not have that relationship fall apart. Because I’ve seen matters where

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there has been significant disputes about money and then relationship breakdown and uh surrogate and IPs no longer talking throughout the balance of the pregnancy and just, you know, IPs excluded from everything. So it’s a really good question and it does come up. If it’s something that’s concerning you as an intended parent about whether this is kind of crossing over into a commercial area, again, it’s so difficult to address with your surrogate without upsetting them. But I would definitely be seeking some independent legal advice from your lawyer before you make any such payments, depending on what it is.

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you don’t want to go into that realm of commercial surrogacy. Can you buy a surrogate a gift? I uh get asked this one as well. I don’t personally see there’s anything wrong with buying your surrogate a gift. know, buying your surrogate a brand new car might be something different. nice gesture of giving them a nice gift. don’t think that there’s a difficulty with that. don’t think the court would have a problem with that. She becomes your friend if she wasn’t already. so you see…

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What gift might you buy your friend for her birthday or if she’s going through a particularly hard time with her life and family, a pamper package or that type of thing. But if it’s a trip to Hawaii or a car, that’s going too far. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. It’s just sometimes some of the requests can blur those lines. So not so much a gift, but more so back with just the regular payments or, you know, ad hoc payments here and there for various expenses. It can get a bit murky. So I think, yeah, talk to your lawyer if you’ve got those concerns and do it early.

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and do it before it blows out into something huge and before the relationship really breaks down because you know you can imagine as an intended parent, surrogate’s 30 weeks pregnant uh and they cut ties with you. The devastation that you would feel, concerned, you don’t know what’s going on. The matters where I’ve had that happen, which I’ve had quite a few to be honest.

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have all really been about money. Yeah, it’s an awkward topic to talk about is money because we don’t do it for money and so but once but money has to be talked about and when we talk about it it feels transactional and that’s not why we’re doing it but it’s really tricky for everyone involved. Yeah and getting your counselor back involved at that stage is something like that comes up and it’s really becoming a point of aggravation is a really good idea as well and I’ve seen that be really helpful in the past. Definitely, yes. And the pitfalls we worry about they are but that’s the

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pitfall that I always talk to my clients about is dealing with issues as they come up, especially monetary issues, getting your legal advice, getting your counselor back involved if you see that’s becoming a problem before it blows out.

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um The last point there is that I’ve only had that happen twice. Do you get asked it a lot? Oh, yes, I get asked it all the time. Yes So it kind of goes back to one of the points I made at the outset about the arrangement itself and how it’s not enforceable So, okay. So again, sorry gets 30 weeks pregnant says the intended parents. Oh having a change of heart I don’t want to relinquish this child Obviously the legislation around the country all likes to preserve the autonomy and the

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of the pregnant woman.

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just which is fine. So there’s nothing that you can actually do if she maintains that mindset to force her to relinquish the child to the intended parents unless you go and take some other legal action. Surrogacy is generally dealt with in your state courts. So up here, it’s our children’s court, New South Wales Supreme. However, we’ve obviously all got the Commonwealth family law jurisdiction as well. And so when these disputes arise, often what will happen is and whether it’s that the surrogate won’t relinquish the child or the other one I’ve had is where she did relinquish, but she wouldn’t

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a parentage order. In both of those cases, surrogacy arrangement is unenforceable. You can’t get a parentage order, but you can rely on it over in the other court, the family court, to seek some orders from that court about little one being placed in your care and parental responsibility being transferred. The one thing it will never do for you though is get you on the birth certificate. That’s a bit of a risk and something to be wary of, but thankfully I only had that happen twice. Little one ended up with the intended parents both times. uh

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but the birth certificate was never corrected. Yes, and again in my time I can only think of two, they may be the same two, where the baby, yes, has ended up with the parents. Perhaps the legal work at the end has never got ironed out or is still ongoing.

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or things like that. yeah. Yeah. Not pleasant. Not a pleasant experience to go through on the birth of your child, not to mention the added financial cost. Definitely. Yes. I think what I would say from my experience is that surrogates don’t want to keep your baby. They just want to be make sure that they are covered. Most of those things would get sorted out in counselling and the counsellors are very experienced in this to be able to spot those red flags for those surrogates. And it’s like, has she finished her own family? Does she actually want another child? It’s rare, isn’t it? Most surrogates are like, I know,

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I’m done with children, thank you. I don’t want to raise anymore. Yeah, got a couple of questions that have sprung to mind, but what we’ll do is I’ll read out some of the ones that have been typed in already. So Sean asks, are the surrogates able to seek their own legal representation separately to those that are recommended by the IP’s lawyer, even understanding it’s a small pool? that’s okay.

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Yeah, and we always say that to people. We just say, hey, these are some other lawyers we know that are in the area, but you know, use whoever you like. And I suppose it’s like any profession or trade, your hairdresser, your plumber, if you don’t like them, it’s okay. We don’t all gel with everybody. Yes, that’s right. Katie asks that in the case that you’re a single surrogate, so therefore you don’t have a partner that’s going to go on the birth certificate, can you put down the name of one?

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the or one of the biological fathers instead or is it just the surrogate as a solo parent until the parentage order goes through? Yeah, that’s a really good question because I know in my experience when I started doing this back in 2010, a lot of people were doing exactly that. Yes. Putting one of the parents on and the single surrogate on as well. And they got away with it for many years. But it’s not actually correct at law because what you’re doing is you’re transferring parentage from, yes, one person to two, not

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two people to two people, but you’re really transferring from one to the same in that first example. And the law says that if you are a single surrogate, you are the only parent. If you’ve got no partner, you’re the only parent that goes on that birth certificate initially. So yeah, people were getting away with it a bit. um And then there was a judge in New South Wales who picked up on it and was not, he wasn’t prepared to allow it to go through. So they had to go back, sort out the birth certificate and then come back to court and do it properly. Yeah.

23:19
Don’t do it. It’s not worth the risk. Yeah, absolutely. Sean asks, does that particular scenario where the IPs are not on the birth certificate have implications on future things such as he says gaining a passport? I’m thinking things like Medicare or school enrollment, those sorts of things. Yeah. So no is the short answer, because if you had to go off to the family court and get that other style of order that I was talking about, and basically that would be an order that says little one lives with you and you have all the parental responsibility for him or her and parental responsibility includes

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major long-term decisions and includes health, education, name, obtaining passports, all those things that parents would ordinarily make decisions about for their kids. So that order would allow you to do that. It’s literally just that you wouldn’t be on the birth certificate, which is obviously you want to be on there. And it does make things a little more clunky, I suppose, in some circumstances as to why you’ve got to explain, you’re not on the birth certificate, but here’s an order.

24:13
The practical reality is you can still get passwords, you can still make all those decisions. Because they’ve been the primary carers since the middle one. I’m aware of time people and we may or may not get through every question. And so that’s probably a good opportunity to say that for your specifics, you know, concerns, that might be a great opportunity to seek some legal advice either with Kate to book in your own session or one of the other lawyers. A couple of questions that spring to mind for me are that in terms of medical costs ongoing post-birth, even if the parentage order has been made, but they’re pregnancy related.

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uh Like, when do the IPs stop being liable for these costs? Does it end at any particular point for them to budget and plan for? Or because that’s often what causes disputes that I’ve seen in the community over the years when relationships fall apart post-birth as well. I think that’s an excellent question. I’ve got a matter like that at the moment that we’re trying to resolve for the parties. And I think it comes down to how your arrangement is drafted. Because again,

25:09
As I said, I know I’ve said it’s not enforceable, but the financial aspects of a surrogacy arrangement are the surrogacy costs. And so, for example, well, I don’t want to go into the specifics of the matter I’m talking about.

25:21
just in case a member of that group’s in the group tonight. I don’t want to speak about it, I think if you have, you need to be really clear in your arrangement as to when that financial obligation will end. In the arrangements which we tend to draft, we say that we’ll be responsible for the medical costs during the pregnancy and at the time of the birth, but that we have a clause in there that says essentially the surrogate understands that pregnancy is risky and it can have short, mid, long-term risks to health. um

25:48
and so gets received medical advice, they have it received on that advice and they’re happy to assume any risks associated with the pregnancy in terms of long-term risk. However, it is really hard and then I’ve seen other arrangements though where that’s not what’s specified and it says something different. So here it comes down to literally what’s in your arrangement, the detail on that issue and I think that’s a really.

26:07
important issue to have spelled out really clearly in your arrangement. And that might be the case legally, but then there’s that the heart, the trust element going, but what does, what the shoulds, you know, in terms of what is the right thing to do? How would, if it was our wife, you know, how would we want her supported? And I oh don’t think if you were to make those payments that there’s a problem. It’s just whether you’re obliged to. I definitely think there’s no issue. It’s not going commercial or anything. If you assist your surrogate with medical expenses. Yeah.

26:35
I just think the question is whether you’d be obliged to depending on the word you’re sorry is the arrangement. so that’s good so hopefully if the relationship’s intact then it’s that we perhaps we could contribute in some way to help things. yeah well just in terms of that if there are ongoing disputes and anonymous has sort of asked this question

26:54
and then it’s between the two lawyers. So we’re talking post-birth now. The costs for that, are those IPs still paying for the costs of the surrogate’s lawyer as well then? Yes, they are. They are. Up until the parentage order is made, they are. They’re responsible for all of the legal costs. What about after the parentage order is made? No, they’re not responsible for their costs after that. Yeah.

27:13
after the parentage order is made the matter is finalised. then it’s down to, we don’t have to, but depending on how intact the relationship is, not, you know, if we, what do we feel the right thing to do is, oh, this is a complicated world, isn’t it? Yeah.

27:27
And thankfully those situations again don’t arise all that often, but they’re definitely grey areas. again, because surrogacy has only been legal for 16 years, that’s a pretty short period of time in law. So it’s still kind of a raw area of law. It’s a lot of untested issues like these ones we’re talking about. It’s going to be a bit of a watch this space. speaking of that, that could be a nice spot to sum up there. We know that the Australian Law Reform Commission at the moment have been doing a national inquiry into surrogacy.

27:56
And so their final reports due July 2026 here. Are there certain changes that you would like to see for surrogacy in Australia, Kate? Well, the biggest one is just making it a uniform set of legislation. Yeah. Because it’s not fair that there’s different requirements in different states and even down to some states, you would know there’s some states you can’t even be a surrogate if you haven’t had a child before yourself. Like things like that.

28:20
different between the one, know, states in the one country. So I think that all needs to change. It should be a Commonwealth law. And that’s what we want to happen. Do you think it is possible for that to happen? it takes some time. Yeah, but I think it’s possible. Yeah. And do you think we’ll go down a path of compensating surrogates and having more like the expenses a little bit more generous? Yeah, I think so. I agree. I think a lot of surrogates, once you’ve done a journey, you’re like, yes, we definitely agree with that. Often at the beginning, you’re like, no, no, no, no, that’s not why I’m here. And you’re not, but then. oh

28:50
Like I got hit with postnatal depression and the wear and tear on your body and your family. Just a little bit of almost just to pay for a little holiday for you and your family type of thing. Not to incentivise people to just stop their lives and do surrogacy, but just a little bit of compensation I think is. I think that needs to come into play. um

29:09
Definitely. Well, is there anything else that sprung to mind while we’ve been talking about that that you feel would be good to mention or do you think we’ve covered most of it? I we’ve probably covered most of those things. If anyone wants to ask me any other questions, find my details there online. I’ll be happy to answer any questions. Yeah, thank you very much for inviting me along. Oh, you’re very welcome. Thank you for coming here and sharing your experience. Do you have any bits of general advice that you often give to people on the beginning of their journey?

29:35
take some time with getting to know the group. Like make sure you’re really comfortable within your group because yeah, when things do go wrong, it can be really, really, really difficult to you for both sides. And it’s already a stressful experience as it is, and you want it to be, you know, the happiest experience that it can be. So just, yeah, just take a little bit of extra time before you rush in, if that is what you were thinking about doing. ah Yeah, that’s my main advice. I think that most important thing. I think that that’s well summarized there. So thank you.

30:05
Okay. Well, I’ll summarize it up and say thank you everyone for joining us. We hope you found it useful. Check out Surrogacy Australia’s website for future dates. If you still have lots of unanswered questions or would like them answered privately, consider joining SASS, Surrogacy Australia’s support service, to be connected with a mentor.

30:20
and have your questions answered in a one-on-one setting or consider contacting Kate directly to book in some legal advice for whichever stage you’re up to in your surrogacy journey. And for people who are with SASS, we help guide you at the beginning while you’re learning about surrogacy. And then once you have a surrogacy team, we sort of hold your hand through it, provide the recipe if you like. So if you’re looking for that type of structure, check us out.

30:42
I like to say, let’s change the world one conversation at a time so we can educate more people about how surrogacy works in Australia. It can be a very lonely and overwhelming journey, but there is plenty of support in the village if you go looking for it. And as the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. And in the case of surrogacy, it takes a village to make a child. So welcome to the village, everyone. Thank you for joining us fellow villager, Kate. Thank you so much, Anna. Thanks, everyone. Thanks. Good night. Thank you for joining me.

31:10
If you’d like to see other recordings with photos, head over to our YouTube channel to watch other webinars. You can head to surrogacyaustralia.org for more information about surrogacy. Also check out our Zoom monthly catch-up sessions, which are a great way to connect with others in the surrogacy community. Attending a Zoom is scary the first time, but there’s only ever one first time.

31:31
We have all been beginners at some stage. As we say, it takes a village to raise a child and in the case of surrogacy, it takes a village to make a child. So welcome to the village.