Does a written parentage agreement need independent legal advice for each party to be valid?

For a surrogacy agreement, independent legal advice is a legal requirement: the surrogate and each intended parent must receive it before entering into the agreement, or the non-court parentage route in section 10 of the Children's Law Reform Act is not available. For other pre-conception parentage agreements, the Act does not list it as a condition, but its absence can weaken the agreement if it is ever challenged. Because the surrogate, and her spouse or partner, and the intended parents have different, sometimes competing interests, having each side reviewed by their own lawyer helps show that everyone genuinely understood and agreed to the terms — which matters both for the automatic parentage route and, if it comes to that, for a court asked to rely on the agreement in a declaration of parentage application.

An agreement signed without independent advice on one or both sides is more vulnerable to being challenged later on the basis that a party didn't understand what they were signing. Given how much turns on this paperwork, treating independent legal advice as optional is a significant risk rather than a shortcut worth taking. Anyone entering a surrogacy or donor conception agreement should budget for separate legal advice for each party as a standard, expected step.