More intended parents are asking a reasonable question: do I need a full-service agency for everything, or can I assemble my surrogacy journey from the pieces I actually need? Rising costs have made independent and modular journeys more common — and for some families, they are a sound choice. But unbundling professional services also moves responsibility, and risk, onto you. The savings are real. So are the gaps. This is a look at both, so you can decide with your eyes open.
What “independent” and “modular” actually mean
The terms get used loosely, so it helps to separate them.
An independent journey typically means proceeding without a full-service surrogacy agency. The intended parents and the surrogate have often already found each other — through a personal connection, a matching site, or a smaller matching service — and they coordinate the journey themselves rather than paying an agency to manage it end to end.
A modular journey means buying professional services a la carte instead of as a single package: you might engage an attorney and an escrow company and a fertility clinic directly, while handling matching, screening, or case management on your own or through separate specialists. You keep the pieces you value and leave the rest.
Both approaches share a premise: not every family needs every service, and there is no rule that says you must buy them bundled. That premise is often correct. The difficulty is that the pieces are interdependent, and the gaps between them are where problems tend to live.
Why families choose to unbundle
The appeal is straightforward. Full-service agency fees are a significant line item, and a family that already has a surrogate — a friend, a relative, someone they have matched with independently — may feel they are paying for a service they do not need. Others want more direct control over decisions, communication, and cost, rather than routing everything through a coordinator.
These are legitimate reasons. An independent or modular journey can work well when the intended parents are organized, the relationship with the surrogate is strong, and — critically — the legal and medical professional pieces are still handled properly. The mistake is not going independent. The mistake is assuming that unbundling the coordination means you can also unbundle the protections.
Where the risk hides
When an agency steps back, its coordination role does not disappear — it lands on someone, usually the intended parents. Several pieces in particular tend to get dropped, and the legal ones are the least forgiving.
Separate legal representation
In a properly structured journey, the intended parents and the surrogate each have their own independent attorney. This is not a formality; a single lawyer cannot ethically represent both sides of an agreement with competing interests. When a journey is assembled informally, this is one of the first things to get skipped — and an agreement negotiated without independent counsel for the surrogate can be vulnerable later, exactly when you least want it to be.
The gestational carrier agreement, and its timing
The contract has to be negotiated, signed, and finalized before the embryo transfer. It sets out parentage intentions, decision-making, conduct during pregnancy, and what happens if circumstances change. Rushing it, or transferring before it is fully executed, undermines the document you would rely on if anything went wrong.
Establishing parentage
Being the intended parent is not the same as being the legal parent. In surrogacy-friendly states, parentage is confirmed through a court judgment — often a pre-birth order — that depends on the agreements signed months earlier. That process does not happen on its own, and it is state-specific: what holds in California may not hold where your surrogate lives or where your baby is born.
Enforceability across state lines
Surrogacy law varies enormously by state. If your surrogate lives in one state, your clinic is in another, and you live in a third, the question of which state’s law governs — and whether your arrangement is recognized there — is not academic. Getting this wrong can complicate the birth certificate and your legal relationship to your child.
Escrow and financial administration
Without an agency, someone has to hold and disburse funds neutrally and on schedule. A dedicated escrow service exists for exactly this reason; handling it informally between the parties invites disputes and mistrust.
Screening you cannot see the value of until it is missing
Medical clearance, insurance review, and psychological screening of the surrogate are quiet safeguards. They rarely feel necessary — until an insurance policy turns out not to cover a surrogate pregnancy, or a screening step that was skipped becomes the thing everyone wishes had been done.
When modular makes sense — and when it does not
Modular tends to work when the intended parents have already handled the hardest coordination themselves (a known, willing surrogate), and they use professional services precisely where the stakes are highest: independent legal counsel on both sides, a properly timed and drafted agreement, neutral escrow, and a clinic and reproductive-endocrine team doing the medical clearance. In that scenario, you are not cutting protections — you are cutting the coordination you genuinely do not need.
It tends to go wrong when “modular” quietly becomes “minimal” — when the services that get cut are the legal and screening pieces, because they are the ones whose value is not obvious until a problem surfaces. By then, the cost of fixing it usually dwarfs what was saved.
Questions to ask before you unbundle
If you are weighing an independent or modular journey, these five questions will tell you quickly whether your plan is sound or exposed:
- Who is drafting and reviewing the gestational carrier agreement — and do they represent me, specifically? Your surrogate needs her own separate counsel. So do you.
- Without an agency, who is coordinating consents, escrow, and the medical and legal timeline? Someone has to own it.
- Is my arrangement enforceable in the state where the baby will be born? Surrogacy law is state-specific.
- How is my parentage being established, and when? A pre-birth order depends on documents signed months in advance.
- What is the plan if something changes mid-journey — medically, financially, or between the parties? The contract is what carries everyone through.
The bottom line
Independent and modular journeys are not a shortcut or a compromise by definition. For the right family, with the right pieces in place, they are a sensible way to avoid paying for services you do not need. The key is knowing which pieces protect you and refusing to cut those, however tempting the savings. Talking to counsel before you sign anything is the least expensive step in the entire process — and the one most likely to keep a hopeful journey from becoming a legal one.
Maya Shulman is the founding attorney of Shulman Family Law Group, a boutique firm practicing exclusively in surrogacy, adoption, and third-party reproduction, with offices in Calabasas and Santa Barbara and services in English and Russian. She will be presenting on this topic — “Considerations for Independent & Modular Journeys” — at the Men Having Babies 2026 Midwest Surrogacy Conference & Expo in Chicago on Saturday, October 17.
To discuss your journey, book a consultation or call 818-222-0010. This article is educational and not legal advice; it does not create an attorney-client relationship.