Questions to Ask a Sperm Donor

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   Why do you want to do this?

   Open with it, and listen to how long the answer has existed. Someone who has thought about it for years will give a different reply from someone who offered last month at a party. There is no single right motive, but a motive that appeared recently tends not to survive the first complication.

2. 2

   Have you donated before, and are there children already?

   Existing donor-conceived children change several things at once: what he has already lived through, what he told those families, and how many half-siblings your child may eventually find. If the answer is yes, ask how much contact he has with them now rather than what was agreed at the time.

3. 3

   How many families are you willing to help, and would you hold to a limit?

   Ask because your child may want to know one day, and because informal arrangements have no registry enforcing a cap. A donor who has not thought about a number has probably not thought about the half-sibling question either, and that is worth surfacing now.

4. 4

   What do you know about your family's medical history, two generations back?

   You are testing for actual knowledge rather than reassurance. Ask about parents, grandparents and siblings by name and cause of death or diagnosis. Somebody who says everyone is healthy without checking may simply be from a family that does not discuss illness.

5. 5

   Is there anything in your own health history I should know about?

   Ask about chronic conditions, mental health, medications, surgeries, and anything currently being investigated. This is a conversation people edit for fear of being rejected, so it helps to say plainly that you are not looking for a perfect record, you are looking for an accurate one.

6. 6

   Are you willing to have full genetic carrier screening and infectious disease testing, and to repeat them?

   Repeat testing matters as much as the first round, because infectious disease screening reflects the moment it was taken and there are window periods where a recent infection does not show. Ask whether he will agree to the quarantine and retesting arrangement a clinic would normally use.

7. 7

   Would you go through a clinic rather than doing this at home?

   This question is doing legal work as well as medical work. In many jurisdictions whether a licensed clinic was involved is one of the factors that determines who is recognised as a legal parent, and home arrangements between friends are the ones that most often end up in dispute.

8. 8

   What do you understand your legal position to be?

   Ask him before you tell him. The answer reveals whether he has taken advice or is relying on what someone said online, and the belief that signing something private ends the matter is extremely common and frequently wrong.

9. 9

   Will you sign a written agreement, with your own lawyer reviewing it?

   The important part is his own lawyer. An agreement drafted by your side and signed without independent advice is weaker and, more practically, it leaves him able to say later that he did not understand what he agreed to. Offer to pay for that advice.

10. 10

    What do you want to be called?

    Donor, uncle-ish family friend, and dad describe three different arrangements, and people often discover they disagree only after a child is old enough to ask. Get the word now, and get what he wants the child to call him in front of other people.

11. 11

    How much contact do you want with the child, and how much with us?

    Ask for specifics rather than a principle: how often, where, alone or with you, birthdays, holidays, photographs, social media. Vague answers like whatever you are comfortable with are the ones that become disagreements, because both sides hear their own preference in them.

12. 12

    What if your feelings change once there is an actual child?

    Almost everyone underestimates this, in both directions. Ask what he thinks he would do if he found he wanted more involvement, and what he would want if he found he wanted less. What you are looking for is whether he can imagine being wrong about himself.

13. 13

    How would you feel about being contacted when the child is eighteen?

    Donor-conceived people increasingly find biological relatives through consumer DNA testing regardless of what any adult agreed, so anonymity is not something anyone can now promise. Ask whether he is prepared for contact he did not initiate, from your child or from another family's.

14. 14

    What does your partner think, and how detailed has that conversation been?

    A partner's vague agreement is one of the most common failure points in known donation, especially once a child exists or if that couple later has fertility difficulties of their own. Ask to meet them, and treat reluctance to arrange that as information.

15. 15

    What will you tell your own children and your parents?

    His family becomes relevant whether or not anyone plans for it, because grandparents in particular tend to form a view about a biologically related child. Ask about timing too: telling people before conception and telling them years later create different situations.

16. 16

    How do you want us to handle it if people ask who the donor is?

    Agree the public version now. Neighbours, schools, colleagues and extended family all ask, and the child will eventually be the one answering. A story that only works while the child is too young to repeat it is not a workable story.

17. 17

    If we wanted a second child, would you be willing?

    Full siblings matter to many families, and this is the question people most regret not raising at the start, because the answer changes with his life circumstances. Ask about a rough time window and whether storing samples now would make sense.

18. 18

    If the child had a medical problem, what would you be willing to do?

    Cover both parts: providing updated family medical history over the years, and the harder question of testing or donation if a child ever needed a match. You are not asking for a promise so much as finding out whether he can discuss it at all.

19. 19

    What if we moved away, separated, or one of us died?

    These are the scenarios where informal understandings collapse, because a donor's relationship is usually with the couple rather than with either individual. Ask what he would expect in each case, and note whether his answer implies rights he has already agreed not to have.

20. 20

    What would make you pull out?

    Close by giving explicit permission to withdraw. Anyone who says nothing would has probably not considered it seriously. A donor who can name his own limits, a new relationship, a job abroad, a change of heart, is easier to plan around than one who promises there are none.