Never Try to Stare Down a Grieving Widow: Posthumous Use of Gametes and Embryos in Australia

Posthumous use falls into one of two categories –

• Retrieval
• Use

A dear American colleague² has suggested that surrogacy lawyers have one of three roles:

• An architect- who plans the whole journey.
• A pilot- when the intended parents know where they want to go- and want to get there fast.
• A cleaner- cleaning up other people’s messes.

These comments are apt about the role of a lawyer in posthumous cases, too. If it appears that death is on the horizon, engaging a lawyer early can make the posthumous use process for the grieving widow³ quicker, simpler and cheaper.

Conversely, trying to retrieve sperm posthumously can lead to difficulties, which a lawyer is sought to clean up in the most trying of circumstances.

I am going to be discussing posthumous use in Australia – a country of 27 million, but with eight systems of law on this point.

Read the Paper here.

²Richard Vaughn.

³I say widow. While posthumous retrieval from women occurs, it is rare. Posthumous retrieval from men is much more common.