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Court: Embryo implanted in mother's womb after father's death not an heir Friday, Jan 11, 2008 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - A child conceived through in vitro fertilization but implanted in his mother's womb after his father's death is not automatically considered his father's heir under Arkansas' inheritance laws, the state Supreme Court said Thursday in an advisory opinion. The court issued the opinion in response to a request from a federal judge in an Arkansas woman's lawsuit against the Social Security Administration over its denial of her claim for "child's insurance benefits." The Supreme Court noted that the state statute governing intestacy, or the distribution of property after a person dies without a will, was enacted in 1969, before the technology of in vitro fertilization was developed, and therefore does not address the issue. Because the law predates the technology, "we can definitively say that the General Assembly ... did not intend for the statute to permit a child, created though in vitro fertilization and implanted after the father's death, to inherit under intestate succession," Justice Paul Danielson wrote. Danielson wrote that it is not the court's role to create law, but he added that "we strongly encourage the General Assembly to revisit the intestacy succession statutes to address the issues involved in the instant case and those that have not but will likely evolve." Amy Finley and her husband, Wade Finley Jr., were participating in an in vitro fertilization program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in June 2001 when four embryos that had been created using the couple's eggs and sperm were frozen for preservation. Wade Finley died without a will in July 2001. A little less than a year later, two of the embryos were transferred to Amy Finley's uterus, resulting in a single pregnancy. The child was born in March 2003. In April 2003 Amy Finley filed claims for mother's and child's insurance benefits based on the earnings record of her late husband. The claims were denied initially, but an administrative law judge later awarded the benefits. In December 2006, an appeals council reversed the ruling. Finley appealed that decision in federal court, which led a federal judge to pose a question to the state Supreme Court on the issue. |
