Judge: Divorced California couple's embryos can be discarded

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Judge: Divorced California couple's embryos can be discarded

Updated 6:35 pm, Wednesday, November 18, 2015

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A woman must abide by an agreement with her ex-husband to destroy five frozen embryos if they got a divorce, a California judge ruled Wednesday.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo said in a tentative decision that the agreement trumps the woman's desire to now keep the embryos. The woman, Mimi Lee, had argued that the embryos represent her last chance to have children after cancer made it risky for her to get pregnant.

Her ex-husband, Stephen Findley, wanted to discard the embryos in accordance with the agreement he and Lee signed while married.

Massullo said California law is clear that couples must decide what to do with embryos they create in case of separation or divorce.


Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Judge-Divorced-California-couple-s-embryos-can-6642020.php

[valerief]

1. Fundie heads are exploding right now! Syrian kids can

starve and perish, but Jeebus wants those embryos saved!

[Laurian]

2. My first thought, as well.

Huckleberry will be on it, for sure.

[blackspade]

3. A just ruling.

[Nonhlanhla]

4. I feel sorry for her, though

If this is really her last chance to have a child of her own, then I feel very sorry for her. I wish there was a way for them to sign a contract that would exempt the ex-husband from financial responsibility for the child if she chose to use an embryo. That way she gets the child she wants, and he does not have financial responsibility for the child - he would be pretty much like a sperm donor.

But I realize that there is probably no way to get an outcome that will work for both of them.

It's a difficult case.

[restorefreedom]

5. yeah, he doesn't have to enforce the agreement.

he could just let her have a kid.

i'm gonna guess a less than amicable divorce.....

[Calista241]

6. The husband would be on the hook for child support in this case. N/t

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

7. It's his only chance to say that he doesn't want

to pay child support.

Regardless of any agreement made between them that he wouldn't have to pay, no court is going to uphold their agreement if she sues for child support. As a man, he is on the hook.

I do feel for her though. It's a very sad situation.

[Nonhlanhla]

10. Yes, I realize that

I know he'll be on the hook for child support. I just wish there was a way for a binding contract for no child support to be created in cases like this. This is not the first case like this, and other judges ruled in favor of the women in those cases.

[24601]

8. I believe that it's much It's more than financial. The decision to have a child is really up to

both parents and that a decision made stands unless both agree to change - the laws governing contracts. This decision reinforces "My body my choice" precisely because the embryos are not.

[trillion]

12. I agree with you. But this is a slipper slope. Does this mean men can stop abortions if they want

because they own half. Can they demand them too? Keep men out of our uteruses. I don't like that the guy has any say in this. Men have had controlled of women for millenia and this is just more of that. Guys will demand abortions for their own financial reasons if this behavior is allowed to progress. Sure she had an agreement - which I'm sure she likely went into under duress because she knew she needed the fetuses -perhaps she knew she had cancer.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

14. The embryos are not in her uterus.

Nobody is 'in her body'. The 'slope' is on a different mountain entirely. If she already had one implanted, no judge around would order an abortion.

[snooper2]

24. I went down a slipper slope once it was cool!

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

15. I'm not sure how valid her argument is.

She says it's 'risky for her to get pregnant', but that goes for embryos inside her body. So it would be equally risky if she got one of the frozen ones implanted. She's going to have to use a surrogate anyway. So unless she's not dropping eggs any more, she could still have eggs harvested and combined with sperm from some other guy outside the body - which is probably how the other five were created as well - and she's always going to have to use a surrogate.

[LisaL]

18. She is now 46 years old.

What eggs do you think she can have harvested? Do you think women produce these eggs indefinitely?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

37. I missed the 46 years old part.

Although there certainly have been older women still producing eggs. But the argument listed in the OP was not 'I'm past menopause and no longer producing eggs', it was 'it's too risky for me to get pregnant' or somesuch.

[Sunlei]

34. it is risky- but then we have Octomom :)

[tammywammy]

9. Here's some more background

And while she testified that before their separation, she and Findley had never discussed or argued about possible destruction of the frozen embryos, Findley’s attorney quoted a deposition in which Lee acknowledged that Findley had told her, a year and a half before the breakup, that he wanted the embryos destroyed if they divorced.

Lee tearfully confirmed Findley’s accounts of two angry conversations she had with him after their breakup. In one, she asked Findley whether he would pay her millions for the emvbryos. The other took place after he told her he might have to sell the San Francisco condominium where they lived. Lee told him that if they ever had children from the frozen embryos, “you should be worried about what I’ll say to them if you’re not generous to me.”

But Lee said Thursday that she had just been trying to get Findley to take her concerns seriously about the embryos, a subject he wouldn’t discuss. They are “my last chance to have my own babies, and they’re priceless to me,” she said, adding that she would never have accepted any amount of money for them.

She also denied trying to blackmail him into giving her the condo.

http://m.chron.com/bayarea/article/Woman-says-she-thought-agreement-to-destoy-6389208.php

[trillion]

13. I still don't agree. If the guy has say over the fetus out of the womb it's not a large jump before

he can demand termination of a fetus in the womb because they are divorced or for financial reasons.

[Sunlei]

11. That is very cruel of the man. At the least the embryos should remain in storage.

[Nihil]

16. Why?

> At the least the embryos should remain in storage.

So that both parties can spend even more on lawyers in the future
in order to re-hash a decision that was already made?



This is nothing to do with "my body, my choice" but all to do with
the bickering over objects stored off-site being included in the property
being split up during a divorce.

Decision made. Do it and stop making the circus worse.

[Sunlei]

17. just because they may be 'trash object' to one person doesn't mean they aren't 'future children'

to another person.

[Nihil]

19. We are not talking generically: The decision has been made for those particular embryos.

They are not children, future children, potential grandchildren or any other
emotionally-laden term. They are (or were) frozen tissues containing DNA
from two people who had already agreed on the future disposition of said
objects. The judge agreed with that original disposition despite the fact
that one of those two people subsequently changed their mind (and,
apparently, attempted a form of blackmail involving them). Case closed.

You want a "future child"? Adopt a real one in the present rather than
getting in debt to lawyers in order to gamble on a popsicle, half of which
is from a person who you are fighting with.

[Sunlei]

20. They may be 'contract objects' to you, but to me and with my 'personal empathy' it is

cruel to destroy 'future children'.

The man could always turn control of any 'objects' to the woman, change the contract, change the divorce court papers..but nooo, in order to make a divorce as bitter & hateful & cruel as possible he doesn't.

[christx30]

22. Then he'd get hit with child support,

and be paying a chunk of every check to his ex for the next 18 years. He wants to move on with his life.

[Sunlei]

23. that probably can be worked into any contract*. doubt thats why he wants potential kids 'destroyed'

some breakups are very bitter and angry.

* sperm donors don't have any paternity type claims.

[christx30]

25. A judge can do pretty much

anything he or she wants, to protect the best interests of the child.
There are some cases where the man has proven he is not the father via a DNA test. But the judge granted a support judgement against him to take care of the child.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3672474

You think a judge would hesitate to dismiss any "we had a deal" arguments?

[Sunlei]

29. yes a Judge can do what they want, and contracts can be changed in our court system.

[christx30]

32. But the change has to be agreed to

by both parties. And the sperm doner isn't budging. It can't be forced on him.

[closeupready]

30. There is case after case where figurative 'sperm donors' DO have

what you refer to as "paternity type claims".

[Sunlei]

33. He can always quit-claim on the embryo storage fee and then be a royal pain in the butt for decades.

Another bitter divorce that keeps on & on for decades.

[DLevine]

21. Why should he be forced into becoming a father?

He stated he doesn't want to have a child with a woman he is not married to. They both agreed to this beforehand. I think this was a just ruling. Of course, if the embryos were in her uterus, it would be 100% her choice- her body, her choice.

[Sunlei]

26. I'm almost positive no one 'forced' his sperm to jump on that egg

[DLevine]

27. They made an agreement.

Nobody forced this woman to agree to destroying the embryos in the event of a divorce.

[Sunlei]

31. I bet at that time in their lives, they both never dreamed it would come to this.

[Tempest]

35. They obviously did

Because they talked about it before the divorce.

[Sunlei]

36. I meant at the time she had her eggs fertilized, so she could have children.

Not the years of bickering.

[ManiacJoe]

46. It most certainly came up during the paperwork for the procedure.

What happens to the embryos during a divorce would be a "standard paragraph" in any modern contract.

[closeupready]

28. Good ruling. She can still likely adopt, as well.

K&R

[StevieM]

39. Yeah, and let's not worry about the birth mother, likely in dire circumstances and forced to accept

a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And let's not give any thought to the high likely hood of coercion.

[closeupready]

40. You make no sense. If this woman wants a child,

there are unwanted children who are available for adoption. End of story.

[StevieM]

44. Not even close to the end of the story. Most infants adopted in the U.S. come from mothers who

love their children and desperately wanted to keep them.

The overwhelming majority of children who are adopted as babies had loving mothers who were either coerced, tricked or forced to accept a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

[closeupready]

45. You might believe that, but I have no reason to believe it.

Peace.

[Nye Bevan]

38. I wonder why the man wants the embryos destroyed?

Spite? Or he doesn't want to pay child support and there is no watertight way for the woman to legally waive her right to it?

[closeupready]

41. Does it matter? Legally as a society, we've set policy that no, it doesn't matter.

A woman can have an abortion on demand. Period. Are you suggesting you believe that policy is wrong?

[Nye Bevan]

42. No, I'm not connecting this in any way with abortion.

I'm just wondering what the man's motivation is in not allowing the woman to keep the embryos.

[closeupready]

43. Who knows. I doubt he'd tell anyone, if asked.

Why open yourself up to that nonsense? Spite, money, inauspicious star alignment ...

They had an agreement, that's that, end of story.

[ManiacJoe]

47. Child support would be a very large part of it.

The waiving of the child support by the mother would require changes in the state laws in most states.