An Ohio appellate court reversed a trial court’s decision to evenly split a divorced couple’s embryos between the man and woman, concluding the lower court erred in applying a contractual approach to embryos in dividing them as marital property instead of a balancing method.
In an April 17 opinion, the Ohio Ninth Judicial District Court of Appeals majority agreed with the wife, identified by the initials E.B.N., who is also an attorney, who challenged a lower court’s ruling of the division of frozen embryos during a divorce from her husband, R.N. She argued that the trial court erred in applying a fertility clinic’s declaration of intent contract without balancing the parties’ interests when determining the proper disposition of the 14 frozen embryos. The wife wished to use the embryos to become pregnant, while R.N. wanted the embryos donated to couples looking to conceive.
