Court - Children conceived posthumously have rights

BOSTON -- Children conceived artificially after the father's death have the same inheritance rights as other youngsters, the state's highest court ruled unanimously Wednesday.

"Posthumously conceived children may not come into the world the way the majority of children do. But they are children nonetheless," Chief Justice Margaret Marshall wrote in the 7-0 decision.

For inheritance rights in such cases, the mother must prove a genetic relationship between the father and child and establish that the father consented to posthumous conception and agreed to support his child, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled.

Most states have laws granting rights to children born after the father's death if the child is conceived before the death, but they do not address the rights of children born through posthumous conception, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

In Massachusetts, the question came before the court in the case of Lauren Woodward, a mother from city of Beverly who had twin girls using her husband's frozen sperm two years after he died of leukemia.

After the twins were born in 1995, Woodward applied for survivor benefits for her and her daughters, but her claim was rejected by the Social Security Administration.

Woodward sued in federal court. A federal judge then asked the Supreme Judicial Court to decide whether Massachusetts inheritance law grants posthumously conceived children the same rights as naturally conceived ones.

The high court was not asked to rule specifically on Woodward's case, so the dispute will return to a lower court. But the ruling clearly favors Woodward's position.

"These children should not be discriminated against based on the timing of their birth, especially in this situation, where there is absolutely no question at all that they are genetically the children of this couple," said Woodward's attorney, Thomas C. Fallon.

The Social Security Administration argued that under Massachusetts case law, heirs must be determined at the time of death. Since the children were born after Warren Woodward's death, they are not legally his heirs, Assistant U.S. Attorney George B. Henderson II argued.

Henderson would not comment on Wednesday's ruling.