Under current Texas law only married individuals may enter into a gestational agreement. These agreements are used to ensure that all parties involved with using a surrogate to create a family are protected by the law. The lack of access to these agreements has not stopped people from using surrogacy as a way to grow their families, but it does prevent people from being protected by the law. The legal protections of surrogacy agreements should be available to all parents and surrogates.
Gestational agreements provide an enforceable and fair option for people to grow their families. In Texas, validation of gestational agreements is not required and gestational agreements are only available to married couples. A contract which is not validated prior to the embryo transfer cannot be enforced and non-biological must establish the parent-child relationship between themselves and the child through a family court after the child is born. HB 1704 would allow gestational agreements to be established after the embryo transfer and would allow gestational agreements made in other jurisdictions enforceable by Texas courts. It would not allow couples whose marriages are not recognized by the state of Texas or single people to enter into gestational agreements with a surrogate mother.
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