Jennifer Maas, Esq.
Jennifer is the founder and owner of the Law Office of Jennifer P. Maas, PLLC. She is an attorney who has been practicing law in the State of New York for nearly twenty years, since her admission to the New York Bar in 2003.
In 2017, Jennifer and her husband utilized IVF and embarked on their own journey to become the very proud parents of a little girl through a wonderful act of altruistic gestational surrogacy and the expertise of her reproductive team, after the trials and tribulations of infertility. (You can read more about that experience on her blog.)
More recently, in 2023, she welcomed a son through surrogacy, after matching with a wonderful gestational carrier through an agency.
Having been an Intended Parent herself, Jennifer knows the importance of having focused, compassionate, competent counsel to help Intended Parents, Gestational Surrogates, Donors and Recipients alike to navigate through the complex and rapidly evolving area of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and parentage law in New York to create and expand families. With that passion and experience, Jennifer launched her boutique law firm, the Law Office of Jennifer P. Maas, PLLC, which is dedicated exclusively to ART and Adoption Law in New York.
Jennifer graduated from St. John's University School of Law in 2002 where she was secretary of the Family Law Society, during which time she worked as a law clerk for a family law firm dealing with matrimonial, custody and adoption cases. Prior to that, she obtained her B.A. in Sociology-Based Human Relations from Connecticut College in New London, CT in 1999, where she graduated with honors.
After obtaining her J.D., Jennifer worked for nine years as an attorney prosecuting child abuse and neglect cases on behalf of the NYC Administration for Children's Services, where she supervised the work of several attorneys. Thereafter she worked in the Office of the Attorney General in their Family Services Division in Washington, D.C., continuing to litigate child abuse and neglect cases within the foster care system. She then returned to New York where she worked as a trial attorney in the insurance industry for another nine years—litigating and presenting cases to juries in the Supreme Courts and Civil Courts in New York, until the launch of the Law Office of Jennifer P. Maas, PLLC, when she was able to follow her passion to help individuals involved in third-party reproduction in New York.
Jennifer knows that for many, the journey to form and expand families is a long one—teeming with emotion and stumbling blocks along the way. Untangling the legal process should not be yet another roadblock for parties. Let the Law Office of Jennifer P. Maas, PLLC be part of your team, to guide you through the process so that you can focus your efforts and attention on the excitement of achieving your goals.
Jennifer is a proud member of: American Bar Association’s Assisted Reproduction Technology Committee, Executive Board member of the Legal Professional Group of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), SEEDS (Society for Ethics in Egg Donation and Surrogacy), New York State Bar Association's Family Law and LGBTQ Sections, and the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association. Jennifer is also a former NY State Co-Captain for RESOLVE's Federal Advocacy Day and a continued supporter of RESOLVE.
Alexis Aparo, R.N.
Assisting the law firm as part of the team is Alexis Aparo, a registered nurse who has worked since 2005 in the Labor and Delivery Department at Northshore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, where they have approximately 6,000 births per year. Throughout her career she has worked as a staff nurse as well as Assistant Nurse Manager, and currently she works in the role of Nurse Educator for Labor and Delivery, assisting in educating seasoned as well as new nurses to stay current with best practices in the field. She holds certifications in Inpatient Obstetrics, Electronic Fetal Monitoring, Breastfeeding Counseling, Neonatal Resuscitation, and Basic (& Advanced) CPR and Life Support. Alexis is also a certified AWHONN Fetal Monitoring Instructor, BCLS Instructor and Simulation Instructor.
In addition to her extensive nursing experience, Alexis is also Jennifer's sister and served as her gestational surrogate in 2017, carrying and giving birth to Jennifer and her husband's daughter at the very same hospital and in the very same unit where she worked. Alexis brings to the Law Office of Jennifer P. Maas, PLLC her wealth of expertise not only in nursing (specific to labor and delivery), but also her own personal experiences as a mother of two, and gestational surrogate, having given birth to her niece.
As part of the law firm and for those clients who find it beneficial, Alexis is available (at no extra cost) to answer questions that clients may have about aspects of the surrogacy experience, or about pregnancy and the ins and outs of the labor and delivery process itself. For intended parents or non-gestating parents who won't necessarily have a close relationship with their surrogate's or gestating partner's obstetrician, it can be particularly helpful to have a resource to turn to, to answer general questions and explain generally what to expect. This can be helpful both during the drafting phase in surrogacy agreement matters to help intended parents clarify their own expectations, and further into pregnancy to help explain and define things from a nursing perspective. For clients who are surrogates themselves, it can be helpful to have someone to turn to who has themselves stood in the same shoes.
(**Alexis' role in the law firm is as a consultant, to complement but not substitute for the professional and medical services and advice provided by the other outside members of our client's family formation team. Clients should understand that her impressions and opinions are never meant as a substitute for the medical advice of one's own treating and evaluating doctor or other health care professional with intimate knowledge of the unique medical aspects of a client's particular case, or with other more specialized medical expertise beyond nursing.)