The surrogacy journey brings together several people, including intended parents and surrogates who share this extraordinary and personally rewarding experience. In many cases, it also includes a team of experts who help guide the journey. Circle Surrogacy & Egg Donation has more than a quarter-century of experience supporting intended parents, surrogate mothers, and egg donors through the surrogacy and egg donation process. If you’re a Minnesota resident, you can use this guide to learn about the surrogacy process in your state. And, once you've reviewed the information, Circle Surrogacy is ready to support you each step of the way during your journey.
The "Land of 10,000 Lakes" is an excellent state in which to pursue surrogacy. People of all backgrounds who are ready to start and expand their families work with Circle Surrogacy's team, which provides expertise and support. The surrogacy journey involves:
Among the multiple benefits of choosing to partner with Circle during your journey is that many members of our team have personal experience as intended parents, surrogates, or egg donors. They understand the thoughts and feelings of people embarking on their own surrogacy journeys.
Because people involved in surrogacy come from varied backgrounds and include a wide range of ages, no two surrogacy journeys are the same. Individuals of all sexual orientations—both couples and individuals—build their families through surrogacy. Intended parents from Minnesota often include:
The women who become gestational surrogates and egg donors are amazing individuals with backgrounds just as diverse, making each surrogacy and egg donation journey unique.
There are no surrogacy laws in Minnesota, meaning intended parents and surrogates can pursue the dream of adding to a family in a straightforward way—especially when guided by experts and professionals who help navigate the journey.
The benefits for Minnesota surrogates, intended parents, and egg donors include:
If you intend to use an egg donor as part of your surrogacy journey, we recommend matching with her and creating your embryos as soon as you sign on with Circle. Using Circle Surrogacy's egg donor database, you can choose from various young, intelligent women whose physical and emotional health has been documented and who would love to help others become parents.
Circle's Matching team helps match intended parents with the perfect surrogate and encourages you to get to know each other and develop a strong bond.
Circle assists intended parents throughout pregnancy by:
Many intended parents and surrogates form close relationships during this special time, joining their surrogates for prenatal appointments, either in person or virtually via video.
Once you're both emotionally and financially ready to begin the surrogacy process within the next 12 months, it's time to schedule a consultation with the agency you selected.
Circle Surrogacy offers complimentary, in-depth surrogacy consultations with a parent intake consultant and a lawyer. These private meetings typically take 2 to 2 1/2 hours. This is a time when we get to hear your story, learn more about each other, review the surrogacy process for you specifically, and discuss your questions or concerns. Additionally, we review our surrogacy programs and costs.
If you're not ready for a full consultation but would like more information, you can schedule a pre-consultation with our intake team by contacting [email protected] and someone will reach out to coordinate a time.
Circle Surrogacy's all-inclusive cost surrogacy program, the Journey Protection Guarantee Program, is the only one of its kind in Minnesota.
We designed this program to provide the utmost protection and financial security for intended parents, with no surprise costs or fees popping up during the journey. No other surrogacy agency can promise that!
Journey Protection Guarantee Program
Surrogacy only: $157,750
Surrogacy plus egg donation: $184,750
(both prices exclude IVF)
Our Journey Protection Guarantee offers Intended Parents:
Our Journey Protection Guarantee Program includes fixed costs on the following:
Circle Surrogacy is proud to offer this all-inclusive program to help as many Minnesota intended parents as possible bring home a baby while reducing variable costs.
Some intended parents may have the opportunity to qualify for financing for their journey. Please speak with our Parent Intake Team or Consultation Team or by filling out this form.
Successfully matching intended parents with surrogates is one of the most gratifying experiences for our Circle Matching Team. Finding the right match is an exciting part of the journey to parenthood that is transformative for all involved. We work with many surrogate mothers in Minnesota and surrounding states, so intended parents may have the opportunity to work with a local surrogate.
Before starting the selection process, it’s time well-spent to think about what's important to you in a gestational carrier. We recommend preparing a mental checklist that includes the qualities you believe are most important in a surrogate. This can make the selection much easier, whether you’re pursuing an independent journey or working with a surrogacy agency's list of candidates. The majority of surrogates and intended parents matched by our agency have remained connected well beyond delivery, something that makes us proud.
Your answers on our intended parent profile help the Matching Team at Circle get to know you better and find a candidate who we believe will be an ideal surrogate for you. The profile asks about you, your relationship (if you have a partner), your family, your hobbies, your plans for parenthood, and what brought you to the surrogacy process. Sharing photos of yourself, close friends or family members, and any other subjects that better acquaints us with you as a person is invaluable.
You also have the opportunity in your profile to specify:
If you are embarking on the surrogacy journey on your own, these guidelines can help you match with a compatible surrogate.
Intended parents often ask us how to determine who would make a suitable surrogate mother in Minnesota for them. We recommend asking yourself the following questions:
1. Does she meet the legal requirements? Our legal department ensures each surrogate presented as a potential match meets the requirements of Minnesota's surrogacy laws.
2. Do her personality and surrogacy expectations match yours? At Circle, your Matching Team (which includes a lawyer) works with you to ensure the surrogate's personality and expectations fit well with yours. That typically leads to a comfortable relationship throughout the journey.
3. Do you have similar views on termination and selective reduction? Thinking about selective reduction or pregnancy termination is difficult, but it's important that surrogates and intended parents agree on the issue before starting the journey. In our experience, intended parents typically prefer to have the option to terminate or selectively reduce if issues arise.
Finding the right egg donor, if that's part of your journey, is extremely important because the donor contributes half of the child's genetics.
Before beginning your search, ask yourself if there are any qualities that your egg donor absolutely must have. Other important questions to answer include:
If you're not entirely sure about certain qualities you want in an egg donor, our experienced team can help you make a great match.
Gestational surrogacy is permitted and practiced in Minnesota because no statute or published case law prohibits it. While some courts may grant a pre-birth declaratory judgment establishing the intended parents’ parentage, an order following birth is required before the child’s birth certificate can list the intended parent(s), reflecting legal parentage.
The process to establish joint parentage varies by county and the exact genetic relationships. Often, a non-genetic parent is required to finalize an adoption (whether it be in Minnesota or the parents’ state or country of residence) to be declared a legal parent. The child’s birth certificate can then be amended to reflect that parent’s legal status. Despite these extra steps and required court appearances by all parties after the birth, the process is generally handled quickly in Minnesota (within a few weeks if the adoption is finalized in Minnesota).
Surrogates are women who have children of their own, have had relatively easy pregnancies and births (they like being pregnant!), and many have completed their own families. Surrogate mothers want to help others have their own families.
What is surrogacy? It's an amazing way to help make intended parents' dreams come true and give others the ultimate gift: a baby!
There is a lot of information out there about becoming a surrogate, but here are 5 quick things for you to know before you begin!
Ready to learn more? Read on!
Ready to apply? Apply here!
Circle's experienced social workers and program coordinators provide support and guidance to Minnesota surrogates throughout the surrogacy process. Many of our team members have been surrogates themselves and understand the physical and emotional experience. Surrogate Advisors or other experienced surrogates are ready to talk with women considering gestational surrogacy even if they're not ready to submit an application.
The surrogate process involves:
Learn more about the surrogacy process at Circle and how we support our surrogates each step of the way.
Gestational surrogates are very special women who are passionate about motherhood and family. All kinds of women become surrogates, including teachers, medical professionals, and stay-at-home moms. Gestational carriers have had smooth, uncomplicated pregnancies and enjoy being pregnant but have determined that they are finished growing their own families.
To qualify as a surrogate mother in Minnesota, you must meet the following requirements:
Our surrogate mothers who live in Minnesota enjoy both monetary and emotional benefits, which include:
See Circle's full list of benefits and compensation for surrogates in Minnesota. We begin monthly payments and provide compensation and benefits to our surrogates even before they become pregnant.
It's safe to say that members of the Circle Surrogacy team who have been surrogates themselves understand and appreciate the physical, emotional, and mental commitment required to be a surrogate—not to mention the dedication of their families. Circle Surrogacy's compensation and benefits program was created for surrogates by surrogates and provides security, benefits, and protection that are virtually unsurpassed.
We created our new Surrogate Pay & Family Protection Program with surrogates and their families in mind. It provides the following benefits:
You may still be considering other agencies based on their compensation; even so, we encourage you to apply with Circle. We'd appreciate having the opportunity to talk with you about those offers—we can match them. We promise you'll have the best surrogacy experience with us.
Surrogates receive their first payments before they are pregnant, and payments continue throughout their pregnancies. We break down surrogate pay into the following categories:
Base Compensation
Calculate your base compensation with our payment calculator to see how much you could earn as a surrogate in your state.
Payments Before You Are Pregnant
Circle compensates you early in your journey for completing tasks and milestones, such as a signing payment and for your medical screening. These payments are in addition to your base compensation.
Payments During and After Surrogacy
Surrogate mothers also receive financial support for necessities during the pregnancy, such as maternity clothing, housekeeping, pumping and shipping breast milk, and more. These payments are in addition to your base compensation.
Additional Benefits
Surrogates will receive additional non-monetary benefits that are priceless in ensuring they’re protected and have a smooth journey. These benefits include social work support, legal counsel, life insurance, and more.
As mentioned earlier, the exceptional support we provide surrogates stems from the fact that many of our staff members have completed the surrogate journey themselves. That support begins the minute surrogates fill out their applications and continues through delivery day and beyond. During that time, our pre-screened surrogates have access to:
You can talk with experienced members of our team to get answers to any questions you may have.
Surrogates working with Circle get connected with skilled, trustworthy experts, including attorneys in the areas where they live. These lawyers have a strong working knowledge of assisted reproductive technology (ART) law and have worked in the past with Circle. They can help you review and understand any legal contracts. It's just one more way we help make the entire surrogacy process smooth and simple. To learn more, read our blog post about the 10 steps to becoming a surrogate.
We created the Circle Surrogate Promise based on feedback from previous gestational carriers to improve our offerings. This program guarantees pay, security, and support exclusively for Circle Surrogates; no other agency can offer the same level of security and support. We genuinely care about our carriers and want surrogacy to be as successful and rewarding as possible for each of them.
Through this program, Circle Surrogacy promises:
1. Guaranteed compensation. Circle ensures that each surrogate is always paid in full and on time because we financially back our intended parents.
2. Zero medical bill liability. Circle Surrogacy takes on the liability of medical bills. Some of our previous surrogates expressed frustration about medical bills, and we've made big changes. While a surrogate is the patient and will always receive medical bills, our new fixed-cost Journey Protection Guarantee Program for intended parents allows us to protect both the surrogates and intended parents and ensure all medical bills will be paid in a timely manner.
3. Up to $5,000 compensation, even if you leave the program. Women accepted into our surrogate program who are medically cleared and matched with intended parents—but who don't achieve a pregnancy—are compensated for their time, energy, and dedication thus far in their journeys (up to $5,000 total).
4. Empowerment in birth choices. Gestational carriers may have different preferences regarding the birth of their surrogate baby. At Circle, our surrogates have choices for their preferred birth options, such as doula care, a hospital birth, or using a birth center with a midwife.
5. Personalized, small agency feel; large agency resources. An experienced carrier likely will be the first person you speak with at Circle. She'll guide you through the process until you are matched with your intended parents. They'll also personally introduce you to your dedicated social worker and journey support team, all of whom are in-house at Circle. You'll always be supported by a Circle employee who knows all the details about you and your journey. (You'll never have to worry about working with a third party who doesn't even know your name!) Plus, with our expanded team, we can offer support groups, virtual events, one-on-one surrogate mentorship, and more.
Being matched is an exciting time for both you and the intended parents. Our extensive and thorough matching process ensures we match you with the right intended parents in Minnesota. This is the start of one of the most consequential journeys that a surrogate and intended parents will take, and it's important to establish a strong connection and trusting relationship.
At the outset of the matching process, your Surrogate Advisor discusses personality fit and legal circumstances with the intended parents. You'll then get to review each other's profiles, ask questions, and see if you feel comfortable with each other. You will also meet the intended parents in an initial video call or possibly in person. It's important to make sure that both you and the intended parents feel comfortable with the match. Only then will we move forward with the surrogacy agreement.
Circle works with all kinds of intended parents, including LGBTQ+ and heterosexual couples, couples in the U.S. and other countries, singles, and more. We're confident there's the right match for you.
AU
中文
FR
IE
NO
SE
