Sunday, January 13, 2002

TAKING AFTER FATHER -- A Frozen Sperm Riddle
"It's another in the long string of examples of the law struggling to come to terms with new reproductive technologies that raise questions that traditionally did not have to be faced," said Sally Goldfarb, who teaches family law at Rutgers Law School in Camden, N.J. "It used to be that a child born more than a year after a man's death was conclusively presumed not to be his child. We can't say that anymore. There's a vacuum in terms of legislation on the issue, so the courts deal with it, case by case."

The highest court in Massachusetts ruled this month that twin girls born two years after their father's 1993 death from leukemia should have normal inheritance rights, if both the man's consent to the conception and his genetic relationship with the children could be proven.

"Posthumously conceived children may not come into the world the way the majority of children do," said Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. "But they are children nonetheless. We may assume that the Legislature intended that such children be `entitled,' insofar as possible `to the same rights and protections of the law' as children conceived before death."

Her decision acknowledges that granting inheritance rights to posthumously conceived babies may complicate life for earlier-born heirs. "In an era in which serial marriages, serial families, and blended families are not uncommon, according succession rights under our intestacy laws to posthumously conceived children may, in a given case, have the potential to pit child against child and family against family," she said, since the later child's share of the inheritance would reduce the amount available to any older children.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/weekinreview/13LEWI.html

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