Anybody know the cost of dealing with lawyer fees re:donor contract and legal advice?

I know I have posted a previous thread asking if anybody knew of any gay friendly lawyers in Townsville but I am now asking if anybody has any idea of the costs involved and what you really need the lawyer for. We mainly want a contract drawn up which we have done so ourselves which outlines the rights of the donor and our rights. We also want to draw up a will making selena the testamentary guardian if i was to die and to also apply for a joint parenting order but these things can come later. First of all we just want to find a lawyer who deals with gay and lesbian issues and to get some legal advice so can anyone tell me how much it cost them? It would just be good to plan some budgetting for when we TTC. Since our donor is in sydney we will be flying him up to townsville once a month so we need to start thinking of keeping our savings for this. Anyway, if anyone can help us it would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Lea n Sel
:inlove:

we used denise maxwell shes based in brissy she advertises that shes gay and does alot for the community we found her easy to talk to and only had one trip to the office to discuss what we wanted and the rest was done by email we sent drafts back and forward till we were all happy printed it, signed it and sent it back simple. you might even be able to do it all over the phone fax or email
our donor agreement and it cost appox $500
you can include your partner taking guardianship (if yoin u die) in your wills i think was approx $500 for both our wills
the parenting order i cant help you with sorry i know its expensive we havent decided which way to go with that as its something that can help in the event of the donor changing his mind and wanting custody as it shows your prior intentions but like a donor agreement isnt solid hope this is a little helpful :)

Thanks so much M2B! we were not sure of what it cost and that sounds much better than we anticipated. I know parenting orders can cost 3 to 4 grand but I think its worth it. We contacted denise and she gave us some free advice about the donor agreement via email. We had one which was too formal so we have had to start over. We also contacted the womens centre here in townsville and a lesbian counsellor there is putting us onto a gay friendly lawyer here in Townsville. We would really like to have face to face contact but if that doesn't work out we will use Denise. Thanks for your help :)

Well we are going to go with Denise Maxwell now. She sounds like the best in the whole state, the girl who said she knew of a gay friendly lawyer in Townsville actually meant that she was in Brissy. Hopefully we can do it all via fax/mail/email. Wills and POA will cost $600 and unsure about the donor agreement since we put it together ourselves, shes just gonna look over it and fix it up a little. We dumbed it down a lot but made it specific to what we want and Selena, Myself and J (our donor) have all written a little statement on the reasons we are doing this and what our intentions are. I think its a good idea for when our little one grows up and sees how much their mums really wanted them too. We will definitely be doing the parenting agreement but not until the bubs born. Anyway, we are glad thats all sorted.

Cheers,

Lea n Sel