Yes! SeedTrust accepts independent surrogacy escrow management cases. Contact us today to learn more about intended parent surrogacy escrow management services.

• Your funds are fully insured.
• We protect all of the parties.
• Every case is has a dedicated and experienced escrow team.
• Enlisting the services of a fund manager vs. a fund holding company benefits all parties.

Learn more at https://www.seedtrustescrow.com/the-benefits-of-working-with-seedtrust-escrow/

It’s really easy! Ask your surrogacy and/or egg donor agency to email your match sheet to [email protected] Once we set up your case, your dedicated SeedTrust Escrow team will be in touch. We will work with you to make sure that you understand how to utilize your dashboard to see all of the activity and documentation pertaining to your escrow funds.

Yes. We work with many international intended parents! Our HIPAA-compliant, online platform translates into seven (7) foreign languages. We have relationships with overseas banks that allow international intended parents to fund their escrow accounts. We also partner with foreign currency exchanges to lock in exchange rates and help minimize exchange fees.

SeedTrust charges a low, one-time fee for escrow fund management. Surrogacy fund management is a $1,850 flat fee ($2,000 for independent intended parents). Egg donor cases are $400. There are no additional annual fees and we don’t charge wire transfer fees or check-cutting fees. Need to rematch? There’s no extra charge for that either. With SeedTrust, there are no hidden fees. EVER.

An escrow fund management company, often called an “escrow provider” is a third party entity that maintains and manages how and when funds are disbursed to the parties who are contractually involved throughout a surrogacy and/or an egg donor journey. The escrow provider is responsible for holding the intended parent’s money in a secure account and ensuring that the funds are distributed in accordance with the provisions of the parties’ gestational surrogacy and/or egg donor agreement.

It’s really easy. Email us at [email protected] and send us the match sheet. We can work off of your match sheet as long as it includes the contact information for the intended parent(s), surrogate and/or egg donor, and your agency contacts. You will be assigned a dedicated team that consists of a client service member, paralegal, and accountant. Roland Salloum, SeedTrust’s COO, manages all of the members on the operations team. He’s reviewed thousands of contracts and is passionate about making sure that you and your clients have the very best escrow experience throughout their journey.

Yes. We work with a great many international intended parents. Our HIPAA-compliant online platform translates into seven  foreign languages. We have relationships with banks overseas to allow international intended parents to fund escrow. We also partner with foreign currency exchanges that will lock in exchange rates to help minimize their exchange fees.

No. Our purpose is to make the escrow process easy for everyone involved. While the majority of our agency partners elect to have us manage all of their cases, we don’t have a policy that mandates that we do so. We will manage as many or as few cases as you choose to refer us.

The majority of the agencies with which we partner do not pay our service fees. Most elect to have the intended parents pay our low, one-time fees. In those cases, the intended parents sign the service agreement with us and not the agency.

We protect all of the parties. In some States, it is illegal for agencies to hold escrow for their intended parents. It poses a conflict of interest since you have matched the intended parent(s) with a surrogate. If you are holding escrow for the intended parent and they feel they don’t wish to pay the surrogate, she is naturally put in an unfair position. The same conflict of interest is true for an attorney holding the escrow. There is no neutral party acting in both parties’ best interests.

Managing escrow is a much better option for all of the parties versus holding it. Our client service, legal and accounting teams review every surrogacy contract associated with each individual case and create a payment calendar that coincides with the language pertaining to payment disbursements in the contract. Once pregnancy is confirmed, all of the relevant parties have access to the calendar and now exactly when the disbursements will be paid to the surrogate. This simplifies the process and minimizes all of the questions around when/how the surrogate should expect to be paid. We are separate and neutral party and the contract is critical while managing escrow. A contract is not necessary to hold and merely disburse escrow.

We take on all of the liability. We accept all of your liability when we manage your escrow cases. That is one less burden that you have to shoulder throughout the surrogacy journeys you manage. If a mistake is made, we accept responsibility. In most cases, we simply absorb the cost of the mistake because we’d rather maintain the highest level of client satisfaction.

Every case is handled consistently and we’ll save your team valuable time. Our goal is to offer you and your clients the same level of care and expertise throughout every journey. Your case managers won’t have to toggle back and forth between different escrow processes. Your intended parents and surrogates will have full, HIPAA-compliant, online transparency allowing them to review ledger statements, disbursement data and the associated documentation so they won’t have to call and email you to inquire about those details. If they have questions, our team is available to answer their questions.

Your intended parents’ escrow funds are fully ensured. That’s huge! Every dollar that we manage is fully covered. In every case of escrow theft or misappropriation, the owners of the company were to blame. Our insurance bond even protects intended parents if any SeedTrust owner/employee steals the money. That is a clause that was extremely hard to have underwritten. Full background checks have been completed on every employee and the bond covers in any/all theft related losses.

We will not close the account until all parties certify that all monies have been paid and that nothing more is due to be paid or reimbursed.  Once we have written confirmation from all parties, we prepare and refund the account funds via check or ACH/Wire Transfer.

Your client portal will remain active for 90 days after your account has been closed allowing you to access and download all documentation. Should you need to access your documentation after 90 days, you can do so by contacting our office, as SeedTrust® maintains files for three years after the contract has ended.

If you determine that SeedTrust is the right fit for you, please contact us at [email protected] or call 1-888-223-9818 and we will walk you through the next steps. For further information about the SeedTrust process please click here.

Because at SeedTrust® we believe in transparency and open lines of communication, we establish a benchmark payment schedule that all parties must agree to and sign off on before we disburse the first payment.

We think having all parties agree on the schedule is the best first step, as it allows for any adjustments to be made and eliminates guesswork. For instance, if your contract noted that your payment was to be disbursed on the 28th of every month and your particular banking institution has a required 4 day hold on wire transfers, you would not receive your payment until after the first of the month. If you required the payment on the first of the month we could easily change the schedule and payment transfer before the engagement began.

Once we establish a schedule that benefits all parties the schedule document is created and stored in the client portal; this document can be accessed at any time. All parties will receive a notification from the SeedTrust® client portal 5 days before a payment is disbursed. Payments are dispersed by either direct deposit, check, money order, certified check, or PayPal.

Payments for Reimbursements 

Download the reimbursement form from your SeedTrust® client portal, complete the form, and upload the completed form and receipts and/or documentation to the portal.

Once all of the documentation has been uploaded to the portal, it will be reviewed, and payment will be promptly made. When the payment has been made all parties will receive a notification from the portal that the ledger has been updated.

The documentation and forms will remain in the portal should either the IP or Surrogate need access to them.

You can easily fund your account using bank wire, ACH transfer, electronic fund transfer or by check. We suggest using wire or ACH transfer as the funds will clear and be ready for disbursement in as little as 24-48 hours. You can fund your account by check, but please note the check may take 10-15 days to clear through your banking institution. Should you need to replenish the funds in your account, you will receive an email notification from your client portal alerting you to do so. After you fund, notify SeedTrust within the system or by sending an email to [email protected] making sure to include your case name, the date you sent the funds, the amount sent, the method of payment and the name of the sender. If you decide to fund your account by check, please note the check may take 10-15 days to clear through your banking institution

Surrogates and Intended Parents have become accustomed to the complicated, antiquated and frustrating process of the industry’s current escrow experience. From the lack of communication to only receiving documentation after multiple requests to inconsistent payment schedules, both Intended Parents and Surrogates waste valuable time and even money.

Using SeedTrust® for your escrow needs introduces you to a new way of managing your funds. It gives you 24/7 access to all of your documentation through your own unique client portal (you can even download the app to your phone or tablet), customized alerts before payments are sent out and when anything has been updated in your portal, and a new and easy scheduling process that we ensure all parties agree upon before we distribute the first payment. Additionally all documentation in your client portal is in real-time; when a benchmark payment or reimbursement is made it is automatically reflected in your ledger which you can access at anytime.

SeedTrust® welcomes ALL clients and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex. 

Escrow means that you’re using a “third party” to hold something of value, which helps to make your transaction safer. The job of an escrow service is simply to ensure that everybody sticks to what is outlined in the contract. Ideally, this would be a neutral third party, as they would have both parties best interests in mind.

Using a third party escrow agency like SeedTrust can eliminate the sometimes-uncomfortable conversations about money and payments that arise between the Intended Parents and Surrogate. By partnering with SmartVault, a secure and easy to access file management system, we have developed a unique process that eliminates the frustrating task of emailing accounting documents back and forth and allows you to spend more time on things that matter.

SeedTrust is owned and operated by an experienced Attorney and CPA and all money is held in a secure, strictly regulated IOLTA account. To date we have worked with Intended Parents, Surrogates, Egg Donors and Agencies in over a dozen countries.