Egg and sperm donation laws operate on two levels at once. Federal regulations set a mandatory floor for infectious disease screening of every donor, and state parentage statutes decide who counts as the child’s legal parent. The strongest protection for everyone involved — donor, intended parents, and the resulting child — comes from doing the donation through a licensed physician in a state that has adopted the Uniform Parentage Act of 2017, with a written agreement signed before conception. Skip any one of those pieces and the legal result becomes unpredictable, sometimes catastrophically so.
Who the Law Says Is the Parent
The single most important legal question in gamete donation is parentage: who is the child’s legal parent, and who is not? The Uniform Parentage Act, most recently updated in 2017, gives the cleanest answer. Section 702 states that a donor is not a parent of a child conceived by assisted reproduction, and the act defines a donor as anyone who provides gametes for use in assisted reproduction, whether or not they are paid.1Uniform Law Commission. Uniform Parentage Act 2017 That rule severs the legal parent-child relationship between donor and child. No child support can be ordered against the donor, the donor has no custody rights, and the child has no inheritance claim running back to the donor.
The limitation is geographic. Only a handful of states have adopted the 2017 version so far, including California, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. Other states operate under older versions of the UPA or their own parentage codes, and those frameworks are often narrower. Under some older statutes, a sperm donor loses parental status only if the donation went through a licensed physician and the recipient was married.2National Library of Medicine. Paternity Law – Sperm Donors, Surrogate Mothers and Child Custody An unmarried woman using a known donor outside a clinical setting can find herself in a state where the donor retains a legal claim to parentage, no matter what the two of them verbally agreed.
Why Clinic Involvement Is Non-Negotiable
This is where most people get into trouble. A donation that goes through a licensed fertility clinic or physician is recognized by the legal framework in virtually every state. A donation handled privately — a friend provides sperm at home, or someone arranges a transfer through an online forum — often falls outside those protections entirely.
Courts have repeatedly found that a known sperm donor who provided his sample without physician involvement can be declared the legal father. Donors who never intended to be parents have been ordered to pay child support because the insemination didn’t happen under medical supervision. The reverse has happened too: donors who wanted a parental role were denied one because the clinic-based process stripped their legal standing. Written agreements between the parties have not always saved the arrangement. Courts in several states have ruled that contracts waiving a known donor’s parental rights are not necessarily enforceable when the statute’s requirement for physician involvement wasn’t met.2National Library of Medicine. Paternity Law – Sperm Donors, Surrogate Mothers and Child Custody
The practical rule is blunt. Use a licensed physician or fertility clinic for the actual transfer of gametes. The cost of doing it correctly is a fraction of what a parentage lawsuit will cost.
What a Donation Agreement Must Cover
A written agreement signed before conception provides the strongest evidence of everyone’s intent, even in states where the UPA 2017 would recognize parentage without one.1Uniform Law Commission. Uniform Parentage Act 2017 A well-drafted contract does more than restate the parentage rule. It answers the questions that otherwise become litigation.
- Scope of the donation: The number of egg retrieval cycles or sperm vials included, and whether the donor can be asked to participate in further cycles.
- Disposition of excess gametes: What happens to unused eggs, sperm, or embryos once the intended parents have completed their family. The usual options are destruction, donation to another recipient, or donation to research, and each carries different legal implications.
- Disposition on death or divorce: If an intended parent dies, or the intended parents separate before the gametes are used, the agreement should say what happens. Courts generally treat stored gametes as personal property and look to signed agreements for evidence of intent. Without clear instructions, family members have sometimes claimed a deceased person’s stored gametes for reproductive use.
- Medical history: A detailed health questionnaire covering at least two generations of family history. This disclosure is not federally mandated, but it helps intended parents assess genetic risk and becomes part of the permanent record.
- Future contact: Whether the donor consents to being contacted by the donor-conceived person in adulthood, and on what terms.
- Compensation terms: The amount, the payment schedule, and what happens financially if a cycle is cancelled before completion.
Separate Lawyers and Legal Clearance
The donor and the intended parents should each have their own attorney. The UPA 2017 explicitly requires independent legal counsel for surrogacy agreements but does not impose the same requirement for gamete donation contracts.1Uniform Law Commission. Uniform Parentage Act 2017 In practice, nearly every reputable fertility clinic and agency requires proof of independent counsel before proceeding. A lawyer reviewing the agreement from the donor’s side is looking at different risks than one reviewing from the intended parents’ side, and combining the representation creates a conflict of interest that can undermine the entire contract.
Once both attorneys sign off, the parties execute the contract and the lawyers typically issue a legal clearance letter to the fertility clinic. That letter confirms a binding agreement is in place and authorizes the clinic to begin the medical process. Some states or clinics require notarization, though not universally. The contract should be fully executed before any medical procedure begins. Signing after conception weakens the evidentiary value of the document and, in some jurisdictions, can render it unenforceable.
When an intended parent has no genetic connection to the child — for example, when both donor egg and donor sperm are used — some states require a court parentage order on top of the donation agreement. This pre-birth or post-birth order formally establishes the intended parents’ legal status without an adoption. Whether you need one depends entirely on state law, and your attorney should flag it during the contract process.
Federal Screening Rules Every Donor Must Pass
The FDA requires every egg and sperm donor to be screened and tested for communicable diseases before the gametes can be used. Under 21 CFR Part 1271, the establishment handling the donation must review the donor’s medical records for risk factors and clinical evidence of infection, then test a specimen.3eCFR. 21 CFR Part 1271 Subpart C – Donor Eligibility The required tests cover HIV types 1 and 2, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and syphilis. Because reproductive tissue carries additional transmission risks, donors of eggs and sperm must also be tested for chlamydia and gonorrhea.
These are not screens a clinic can skip. A fertility program that uses gametes from an ineligible donor faces FDA enforcement ranging from warning letters to orders halting all operations.4Food and Drug Administration. Regulation of Human Cells, Tissues, and Cellular and Tissue-Based Products – Small Entity Compliance Guide Criminal penalties also apply. Individuals who violate these regulations face fines up to $100,000 and up to one year of imprisonment, and organizations face fines up to $200,000.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 271 – Penalties for Violation of Quarantine Laws
Anonymity Is No Longer a Promise Anyone Can Keep
Donor anonymity is eroding from two directions. State legislatures are passing disclosure laws, and consumer DNA testing has made promised anonymity functionally impossible regardless of what any contract says.
On the legislative side, a growing number of states give donor-conceived individuals the right to request identifying information about their donor. Washington has required gamete banks to provide donor medical records and identifying information since 2011, and California, Connecticut, Maine, and Rhode Island have enacted similar provisions modeled on the UPA 2017’s transparency framework. These laws generally allow a donor-conceived person to access identifying information once they reach adulthood. Donors who participate in programs governed by these laws agree at the outset that their identity will eventually be available.
The larger disruption comes from direct-to-consumer DNA testing. Even if a donor never takes a test, they can be identified when a close genetic relative and the donor-conceived child both use a testing service. Combined with publicly available records, the donor’s identity can be inferred without their participation or consent. Some clinics have tried to enforce anonymity clauses with cease-and-desist letters and financial penalties against parents who use DNA testing, but legal scholars increasingly argue that promises of donor anonymity are no longer realistic and may be fraudulent given what the technology makes inevitable.6Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Direct-to-Consumer DNA Testing and Donor Anonymity Neither donors nor intended parents should assume true anonymity, regardless of what the contract says.
Money and Taxes
Egg donor compensation across the United States generally ranges from $5,000 to $15,000 per completed cycle for first-time donors, with experienced or high-demand donors earning significantly more. ASRM’s ethics guidance says compensation should reflect the donor’s time, discomfort, and inconvenience rather than the number or quality of eggs retrieved, and should never be conditioned on a successful retrieval.7American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Financial Compensation of Oocyte Donors – An Ethics Committee Opinion ASRM no longer sets a specific dollar cap. Sperm donor compensation is substantially lower, typically $50 to $125 per accepted specimen.
For donors, all compensation is taxable income. Clinics and agencies report payments to the IRS, and donors who receive $600 or more in a calendar year should expect a tax form.
For intended parents, fertility-related expenses may be deductible as medical expenses under federal law. Section 213 of the Internal Revenue Code allows a deduction for unreimbursed medical care expenses that exceed 7.5% of adjusted gross income.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 213 – Medical, Dental, Etc., Expenses The IRS has confirmed that IVF-related costs, including screenings, fertility medications, and egg and sperm retrieval, qualify as deductible medical care when the taxpayer has a medical condition requiring the procedure. The IRS draws a line at surrogacy costs, however, treating them as medical care for a third party and therefore not deductible by the intended parents.
Inheritance and What Happens to Stored Gametes After Death
Because the UPA establishes that a donor is not a parent, donor-conceived children have no legal inheritance claim against the biological donor’s estate based on parentage.1Uniform Law Commission. Uniform Parentage Act 2017 The parent-child relationship exists only between the child and the intended parents, and inheritance rights follow accordingly. A donor cannot be surprised by an estate claim from an offspring they never agreed to parent.
A separate question arises when an intended parent dies before stored gametes or embryos are used. Courts have generally treated cryopreserved gametes as personal property and looked to written agreements or consent forms for evidence of what the deceased wanted done with them. Where clear instructions exist in a clinic consent form, the donation agreement, or a will, courts have consistently enforced them, including orders to destroy samples. Where no instructions exist, outcomes are far less predictable, and some courts have allowed surviving family members to claim the stored material for future reproductive use. The donation agreement should address this scenario explicitly, and intended parents should make sure their estate planning documents say the same thing.