Can You Become a Father Posthumously?






When the social security system was created, a baby being conceived after one its parents had died was the stuff of wild imagination. Now it’s a reality that the social safety net has to deal with.

Using stored sperm and IVF technology, it’s possible to become pregnant with a dead man’s child. People do it. Do these kids deserve the same survivor benefits that Social Security pays to children whose parents have died after conception?

 

They haven’t found a good answer yet. The Wall Street Journal reports that the agency uses a patchwork of state laws and guidelines to determine whether or not to pay survivor benefits to children conceived through IVF using frozen sperm after the father has died.

In general, the federal government pays monthly fees to children whose have lost a parent. When a child has been conceived after a parent’s death, the situation is murky. Sometimes the benefits are approved and sometimes they’re not.

Eleven states explicitly allow a child to be legally recognized as the son or daughter of a man who died before they were conceived. Most don’t. Confusion about the issue has sparked numerous lawsuits. As these cases are decided, conflicting legal precedents are set. Massachusetts courts ruled that children conceived posthumously are entitled to survivor benefits. Florida’s courts ruled they are not.

In any state, a child whose father dies while the mother is pregnant receives survivor benefits. But in many cases if the child is conceived after the man’s death, even very quickly after, there are no benefits.

This is an incredibly complex issue. On the one hand, as some legal experts point out, death benefits paid to children are supposed to be compensation to help a family survive an unexpected tragedy. They’re not a source of income you’re supposed to count on when you decide to have a kid.

On the other hand, the Social Security Administration is denying these benefits by  claiming that a parent-child relationship does not exist between the father who has passed away and the child born later. That’s an emotionally agonizing premise for these families.

There does seem to be a sound logic to saying that, once a person has died, their Social Security benefits are frozen, and can’t be assigned to future offspring.

On the other hand, this issue centers around a small number of grieving families. Children born through posthumous conception will never know their fathers. Women who choose this route presumably do it out of a deep commitment to the marriage and family they shared with their deceased spouse.

These kids, like any kid who has lost a parent, belong to families struggling to cope with the loss. Financially, emotionally and practically, they’ve lost a huge part of their family before they were even born.

It might not seem “fair” to pay Social Security benefits in cases of posthumous conception, but it might still be the right thing to do. These kids can probably use all the help they can get.

(SOURCE: babble.com)




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