Legal note: This page is educational only. Texas law and court procedure should be applied to the facts of the specific family, agreement and county by a Texas-licensed attorney.
What the Texas statute provides
Texas Family Code §160.754 authorizes a written gestational agreement between the prospective gestational mother, her spouse if she is married, each donor when applicable, and the intended parents. The agreement can provide that the intended parents will be the parents of a child conceived through the assisted-reproduction arrangement.
Marriage requirement in the statutory route
The statute states that the intended parents must be married to each other and that each intended parent must be a party to the gestational agreement. The statute does not describe this requirement as limited to opposite-sex spouses. Families should nevertheless obtain Texas advice on how the current statute and court-validation procedure apply to their exact circumstances.
Gestational, not traditional, surrogacy
Under §160.754, the gestational carrier's own eggs may not be used in the assisted-reproduction procedure covered by this statutory gestational-agreement route.
Court validation matters
Texas law includes a court-validation process for gestational agreements. Intended parents should not assume that signing a private agreement alone produces the same legal result as a properly validated agreement. Counsel should confirm jurisdiction, filing requirements, timing and the parentage plan before embryo transfer.
Medical information and informed consent
The statute requires the agreement to address exchange of relevant health information and requires specified information about the assisted-reproduction procedure to be disclosed. The medical team and attorneys should coordinate the statutory requirements with the clinic's own informed-consent process.
Planning beyond Texas law
Once legal fit is understood, intended parents still need to compare the practical side of the journey: state-related cost factors, the overall U.S. surrogacy budget, candidate availability, and agency fees and inclusions. These factors should be evaluated separately from the statutory parentage route.
What this page does not claim
We do not rank Texas as “friendly” or “unfriendly,” predict a pre-birth order for every family configuration, or compare Texas surrogate compensation with other states. Those conclusions require facts that vary by case or data that are not established by the statute itself.
Related: all state legal guides · surrogacy legal process · cost by state · how to find a surrogate