Reproductive Law Spurs Debate Among Pike Bar Members

Keynote speaker Melissa Brisman shares expertise in this niche practice

Published Dec 9, 2015 at 6:55 pm (Updated Dec 9, 2015)

MILFORD — The Pike County Bar Association last month held a special Continuing Learning Event at Balch’s Seafood Restaurant in Milford.

Among the nine prominent figures in Pennsylvania law on the panel was keynote speaker Melissa B. Brisman, Esq., who has pioneered the niche practice of reproductive law. Her presentation outlined the rights of parents and surrogates, spurring much debate among those in attendance.

Brisman was valedictorian in her graduating class at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and later graduated Harvard Law School with honors. After establishing her practice in 1996, she became her own first client. She became a parent, along with her husband, of two children carried by a surrogate. Another gestational carrier provided the couple with a third child, a daughter, a few years later.

Brisman has achieved numerous distinctions in reproductive law, many of them the first in a given state’s history. She owns Reproductive Possibilities, LLC, a surrogate agency; the reproductive law firm of Melissa B. Brisman, Esq., LLC; and the escrow account management company Surrogate Fund Management, LLC. The three companies work separately — and, at times, together — to help people realize their parental dreams. She’s served clients both domestic and international, single parents and same sex-couples. Her law firm was a finalist for the prestigious 2006 Forbes Enterprise Award. She’s also authored numerous articles on the subject of gestational carriers and reproductive law.

She gave insight into the negotiations and contracts she drafts for an assortment of reproductive arrangements, including gestational carrier contracts, ovum, sperm and embryo donation contracts, as well as adoptions. She went into detail about court orders for gestational carrier arrangements, to allow the intended parents to go directly on the birth certificate of their child; the process for name changes; and the reviewing of insurance books on behalf of intended parents and their gestational carriers.

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