Welcome the New Year with hope, resilience, and the heartfelt story of Marla Neufeld, a surrogacy attorney whose personal triumph over infertility led her to pioneer the surrogacy practice group at Greenspoon Marder LLP. In our latest Good Neighbor podcast episode, Marla shares the intimate details of her journey to parenthood, and how her experiences have shaped her compassionate and legal expertise in helping others navigate the emotional labyrinth of third-party assisted reproduction.
As you settle in with your headphones, prepare for a candid discussion that transcends the legal jargon of surrogacy law and touches the core of human emotion. Marla illuminates the complex process of contractual agreements in reproductive assistance with empathy, guiding those who face similar challenges through the often overwhelming path she and her husband once walked. Her narrative is not just a beacon for prospective parents, but a reflection of the profound impact surrogacy can have on the lives it touches. Join us to connect with Marla's inspiring story and gain invaluable insights into the world of assisted family building.
Welcome the New Year with hope, resilience, and the heartfelt story of Marla Neufeld, a surrogacy attorney whose personal triumph over infertility led her to pioneer the surrogacy practice group at Greenspoon Marder LLP. In our latest Good Neighbor podcast episode, Marla shares the intimate details of her journey to parenthood, and how her experiences have shaped her compassionate and legal expertise in helping others navigate the emotional labyrinth of third-party assisted reproduction.
As you settle in with your headphones, prepare for a candid discussion that transcends the legal jargon of surrogacy law and touches the core of human emotion. Marla illuminates the complex process of contractual agreements in reproductive assistance with empathy, guiding those who face similar challenges through the often overwhelming path she and her husband once walked. Her narrative is not just a beacon for prospective parents, but a reflection of the profound impact surrogacy can have on the lives it touches. Join us to connect with Marla's inspiring story and gain invaluable insights into the world of assisted family building.
This is the Good Neighbor podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Jeremy Wolff.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to the Good Neighbor podcast. I'm your host, jeremy Wolff, and I don't know about everybody else, but I am ready for a spectacular 2024. Happy New Year, everyone, if you're tuning in, and it's so nice to be here, and today I'd like to welcome to the show we have Marla Neufeld. Marla is a. This is an interesting one, guys. We have a Florida surrogacy attorney to talk to today, and it's an interesting one. I've never had a guest that is a surrogacy attorney, so I'm interested to get into this and learn a little bit about what you do, marla. So thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Jeremy. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's great to have you. Thanks to our listeners for tuning in. So, marla, please enlighten us. Tell us a little bit about what you do as a. So is it you work for? Is it Florida surrogacy attorney? Is that the law firm you work for? Is that what?
Speaker 3:is that your role there? Yeah, so I'm a partner at Greenstone Martyr. We're a national law firm with a large presence in Florida and my husband and I actually had difficulty getting pregnant and ultimately had the help of a surrogate to have our children. So we have twin nine-year-old boys via the help of a surrogate. So while I was going through that process I just thought it was such an amazing option for people who have difficulty getting pregnant or might need assistance getting pregnant. So essentially I started the surrogacy practice group at Greenstone Martyr, so I'm the founder of the practice there and I specialize in surrogacy laws, kind of a blanket for surrogacy and anybody that needs assistance with the donation of eggs, sperm or embryos so really anything third party assistive, reproductive related. So if you need a little help getting pregnant or building your family and there's some law involved, that's what I do.
Speaker 2:That's quite the interesting niche. So, going back to obviously, I imagine this is not something that you anticipated getting into. Like you said this, came off the heels of your own personal experience. So when you went to law school, what was your area of focus? Talk a little bit about your journey leading up to the transition into surrogacy law.
Speaker 3:I mean, I wasn't really sure what I was going to do while in law school. I come from a family of lawyers and my husband's a lawyer and we went to law school together and I think I just kept everything really broad in law school and when I graduated law school, I did litigation, I did bankruptcy, I did commercial real estate and land use. So I have a wide variety of different experiences that really do help with the surrogacy law that I do, because a lot of it is contractual. So I had a lot of experience reviewing and negotiating agreements. However, this is a lot different than a real estate transaction. There's a lot more emotion that goes into it and I absolutely love what I do and it's very. It's just an incredible option, but it's tricky. There's a lot involved in it. So, yeah, kind of a series of events led to what I'm doing now.
Speaker 2:Walk us through if you could. Anyone out there listening that is going through what you experience. You're having a problem conceiving. You don't know what to do. Tell us a little bit about that process for you, what you did, where you went and how this evolution took place. Maybe some tips or advice that you can give to any couples out there that are experiencing what you went through.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean now I'm an experienced professional in the surrogacy industry, but I've also went through this personally, as I mentioned, and when my husband and I started on the whole infertility journey we had no idea what to do, where to start. It's confusing, expensive, stressful, and I'll never forget how hard it was going through that. So surrogacy for many people is essentially can be like the last stop on your journey. Most people try other forms of fertility assistance before surrogacy. So, like my husband and I, first we started like there's baby steps. We started with IUI, which is essentially artificial insemination. Then we graduated on to IVF. That kept not working. So we really had to have a deep conversation with our fertility doctor on why isn't this working, what can we do? And then we turned to surrogacy and fortunately it was successful for us the first try with the same embryos that I kept trying on me.
Speaker 3:It's a little bit unexplained why it didn't work on me and why it worked with the surrogate, but thank goodness it did and there's a lot of starting points. I would recommend anybody that's going through this process to obviously have a conversation with your reproductive doctor about the option of surrogacy, and it's always a great idea to also speak to an experienced surrogacy attorney in your applicable state. I mean, I know the podcast listeners are mostly in Florida and surrogacy is a state-specific area of law and it's mostly depending on the location of the surrogate in most times where the birth is occurring. So it's always a great idea to have a conversation with a surrogacy attorney to understand what the law involves, what the process is like, get an overview, because there are legal steps involved for anybody that wants to go through this process.
Speaker 2:Do you know what percentage? I guess most people, obviously, I'd imagine don't have to go through this. You're ready to have children, you can see, naturally. Do you know what percentage of the population has to deal with this type of thing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean infertility is really classified as a form of a disease that people suffer from. The numbers are hard to follow because it's constantly being studied, but I know from a practitioner that just more and more people are not only experiencing infertility but are having to turn to surrogacy and donation, sperm donation, pursuing these alternative forms of conception. I mean there's a lot of different reasons for it. As people wait longer in life to try and get pregnant, that ultimately results in issues, difficulties getting pregnant. Single parents turn to surrogacy many times and same-sex couples obviously turn to egg donation and surrogacy as well. So there's a bunch of different reasons why people turn to this option to build their family.
Speaker 3:What's unique to Florida like I said, every state has their own laws regarding this is Florida actually has a medical need requirement within our surrogacy statute. So in Florida you can't just work with a surrogate just because you don't want to be pregnant. There has to be a medical basis determined by the doctor, that you either can't get pregnant or pregnancy could cause difficulty or risk to the mother or to the fetus. That's kind of going back to why I said it's important to speak to an attorney, because it is important to know what's involved in being able to actually pursue this as an option.
Speaker 2:I gotta say I think it's wonderful that you found your place as a surrogacy attorney after having gone through the experience. I speak to so many guests on the show with similar trajectories where they have some kind of profound personal situation that affects them and they take that and they use it to influence their career moving forward. And obviously there's a special passion about what you do when you have a personal story that's tied into it. So that's wonderful. So, shifting for a second. So let's talk about you mentioned you have twins. You said they're nine.
Speaker 2:Nine-year-old twin boys yes, I have one nine-year-old and one is a handful for me, so that's gotta be fun with twin boys.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it really is, it's great.
Speaker 2:But I do have an 11-year-old daughter that just entered middle school, so I have my hands full too.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely yes.
Speaker 2:So you have to remind me, or certainly our listeners I had your husband, Jason, on the podcast. He's an elder law attorney, a wonderful, wonderful guy, and I'm sure we talked a little bit about what you guys like to do for fun when you're not working during your downtime. But please tell us a little bit about what you like to do.
Speaker 3:I mean, one of our favorite family activities is playing pickleball, and I know it's probably a little cliche.
Speaker 3:But we all love it and we play often and that's a really fun activity for the family and we just love to watch movies and since post-COVID we really learn to embrace staying home and relaxing at home instead of running around so much. So we just love to kind of hang out and relax and do that. I like to bake bread that's another one of my personal interests and challah and sourdough, so that's one of my passions as well that I probably talk about too often with my kids.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I love me some baking. I had another guest on the podcast. Have you ever? Where do you guys live in Hollywood? We're in Davy, you're in Davy. Have you ever been to FA?
Speaker 3:Cafe, oh yes, at the gas station.
Speaker 2:So you know, do you know Nunzio, the owner of the FA Cafe? I mean, he's always there when you go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I follow them on Instagram and everything looks delicious like I want to go every single day when they bake different things.
Speaker 2:But have you been there? You just know.
Speaker 3:I've been, yes, I have been. Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So he's from Italy and he came over here. We were talking about sourdough bread and he apparently brought he started the sourdough starter back in Italy 20 years ago and he brought the starter with him over here and he's been feeding it ever since. So he uses the bread he makes today is from the initial starter from 20 years ago. I thought that was pretty fascinating.
Speaker 3:That's very cool. Yeah, people pass their starters down from generation to generation. People name them. I have to think of a good name for my starter. I had a good one to get.
Speaker 2:That's so funny.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so some of our passions.
Speaker 2:What'd you guys do for, I mean obviously, 2024, we're just on the heels of a new year. What'd you guys do for the holidays? I'd imagine that, based upon what you just said, you guys took it easy and stayed home. We did.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean this is such a great time to be in Florida. I mean the weather here is just gorgeous, so it's hard for me to justify going anywhere else this time of year. So we just stayed home and played a lot of pickleball and watched movies and relax.
Speaker 2:Smart girl, I got it all wrong. I went up to New Jersey and the purpose to visit my brother and his family. We hadn't been up there in a while and unfortunately, you think if you went up there we would get a time where it was cold, maybe it would snow and my kids would see snow. No, it was like 40, 40 degrees, 45 degrees, and rained the whole time.
Speaker 3:So oh, no, well, it's great to be with family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, family is good for sure. So, before we wrap up here, what would be the one thing that you'd like to leave our listeners with, that you'd like them to know about your business?
Speaker 3:I mean, I guess, just having gone through it myself, my, my recommendation is Don't wait too long.
Speaker 3:Like I feel like this can seem like a scary process, that it might make somebody not want to look into it or feel overwhelmed by it. But if you're just if you're considering it and having a difficult time getting pregnant, make an appointment with your fertility doctor and just start understanding your options and really just take it all and baby steps, like I said before, because it's all doable, as overwhelming as it seems, and I just think time really is of the essence with a lot of this as far as fertility, and Unfortunately there is a biological clock that women go again. So I think, just dive in and get as much information as you can to understand your options so that nothing passes you by as far as what's available to you and I'm always available to. I also offer, you know, complimentary 15-minute consultations for anybody that's potentially interested in surrogacy or any form of genetic material donation. I'm always happy to answer any questions if people just want to understand the process and speak to me about it from a legal perspective or even just personally.
Speaker 2:That was gonna be my next question. How can we reach you? Maybe share your contact information?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean happy to provide with my email address at Marla dot Newfeld, at GM law comm, or you can call me at nine five, four, seven, six, one, two, nine two, nine, and I'm also listed on the Greenspoon martyr law firms website. It's you know, within the marital department You'll find me there.
Speaker 2:Perfect and we'll link in the description below to all of your.
Speaker 3:Happy, no questions, off limits and happy to share my own experience for anyone that's going through this. I didn't know anybody that went through surrogacy. When I started this process, I asked to speak to a friend's sister I never spoke to my life who's amazing and a great source of information. So speaking to people that have been through it really helps make it feel less scary. So I'm happy to speak to anybody that's you know, considering this as an option.
Speaker 2:All right, sounds good. Marla, thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Now it's our pleasure, and thanks for everyone for tuning in and we will catch you next time. Everyone to have a wonderful day and take care.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the good neighbor podcast Cooper City. To nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to GnPcoopercitycom. That's GnPcoopercitycom, or call 954-231-3170.