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Bill Singer, Esq. a partner at Singer & Fedun, LLC, has been in the private practice of law in New Jersey for over 41 years. His practice concentrates on the creation and protection of non-traditional families and as counselor to non-profit organizations. He counsels families about the options to form families, including adoption and assisted reproductive technology. He also advises clients how to best protect themselves and their loved ones through life and estate planning. Bill has served as the General Counsel for the National LGBT Bar Association since its founding in the 1980’s and serves as General Counsel to the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys, the ACLU-NJ, the New Jersey Sierra Club and the New Jersey Association for Justice. Bill is the founder and Director of the LGBT Family Law Institute, an organization for attorneys who specialize in LGBT family law. He is the legal advisor to Family By Design, the community of parenting partnerships.

He is a fellow of the American Academy of Assisted Reproductive Technology Attorneys and a member of the National Family Law Advisory Council of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. In 2013, the National LGBT Bar Association named Bill as the inaugural winner of the “Leading Practitioner Award.” The year before, Bill was awarded the Bill of Rights Award from the American Civil Liberties Union – New Jersey, the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award from the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association and the Presidential Award from the New Jersey Association for Justice, Inc.

Melissa Brisman, Esq. received her undergraduate degree from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and her law degree from Harvard Law School. She is an attorney admitted to practice in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, and is a licensed certified public accountant. Melissa Brisman first started helping couples become parents of miracle babies in 1996. Actually, she was her own first client, guiding and directing the process in which she and her husband Dan became parents of twin boys carried by a gestational carrier. A few years later, they had a daughter carried by another gestational carrier.

Melissa is the first attorney to ever obtain orders allowing the genetic parents to go directly on the birth certificate for gestational carrier arrangements in the States of Maine and New Jersey. She argued and won a landmark gestational carrier case before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and the State Supreme Court of New York, setting legal precedents for birth orders in those states. She was the first attorney ever to place two women on the birth certificate of their child, without an adoption, in the State of New Jersey; and to place two men on the birth certificate of their children, born through a gestational carrier, without an adoption, in the State of Pennsylvania. She is a professional member of Resolve, Organization of Parents Through Surrogacy (OPTS) and the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.

Melissa drafts and negotiates contracts for many types of reproductive arrangements including gestational carrier contracts, ovum, sperm and embryo donation contracts; locates gestational carriers; matches couples with the gestational carrier of their choice; works with international couples and same sex gestational carrier arrangements; organizes home studies and background checks on the gestational carrier and her partner; coordinates medical & psychological aspects of reproductive arrangements; finalizes same sex and step parent adoptions; obtains court orders for gestational carrier arrangements to allow the intended parents to go directly on the birth certificate of their child at birth; processes name changes; provides escrow account services and handles insurance appeals.