Who Owns Pre-Embryos?

An anonymous reader writes: Scientifically and legally, frozen embryos are not the same as a living child. Nevertheless, they can inspire legal battles that resemble custody disputes. This article follows a case between a couple who had been dating for five months when the woman received a cancer diagnosis. Before beginning chemotherapy, she and her boyfriend of five months decided to harvest and set aside some fertilized eggs, just in case. (If the treatment saved her but destroyed her ability to have kids, and the couple stayed together and decided they wanted kids, the pre-embryos would preserve that option.) She survived, but their relationship didn't. With no explicit contract in place, the disposition/custody of the pre-embryos is now hotly contested. "[R]eading over the case, one gets the sense that there's a fundamental lack of language to describe what's at stake. There may be an emerging field of law and legal precedent, but the terms at hand don't adequately capture the nature of the dispute."

Comments

Child support

[mi]

You later get divorced, presently childless. She decides to try again and the implantation is successful. Can she come back for child support?

Yes, she can and she will. At least, you produced the sperm while still her husband and would-be father of her children.

If a sperm-donor can be hit for child-support, you would have not a chance. And not just in Kansas, Illinois too only makes exceptions for sperm donated "through medical channels involving a doctor".

It may work the other way too — a donor may get parental rights after an artificial insemination.

Presumably, with the rights comes a child support obligation as well — the two better be inseparable.