Family Law & Fertility Law Blog | Louisa Ghevaert Associates

Genetic Testing, Political Uncertainty & Citizenship: Family Law In Focus

As we start 2025, the evolving realities of direct-to-consumer DNA tests, political uncertainty and demand for foreign citizenship are increasingly calls to action. As people seek to understand and address these challenges it can create complex inter-related personal and legal questions. Such questions are increasingly drawing together and necessitating solutions that require specialist family law expertise. Successfully navigating a path through these choppy waters can require expert management and bespoke family law strategies to address the implications of genetic testing, legal and biological parentage, an application for a Declaration of Parentage and rectification of a birth certificate.

Posthumous Conception In Focus

The law governing posthumous conception in England and Wales sets out clear legal requirements designed to protect an individual's right to consent to the use of their eggs, sperm or embryos in treatment after their death. Eggs, sperm and embryos represent a special class of reproductive cells. They are very private and intimate, representing unique reproductive building blocks in human conception and an individual's genetic legacy. As such, the law is designed to prevent the unauthorised use of a person's gametes (or embryos comprising these) in treatment without their specific consent in life and after death. However, the prescriptive legal framework governing posthumous conception is not without its challenges in real life. What can be done to overcome these challenges?

Secret Sperm Donation & The Early Years of UK IVF

An article in The Telegraph (1) on 20 December 2024 has reported concerns by two individuals about early UK fertility clinic practices, having recently discovered that they share the same secret sperm donor; a scientist in charge of the laboratory in the 1970's on the floor above UK IVF pioneer Patrick Steptoe's clinic at Oldham Hospital. Fifty years on, this has come to light after both individuals registered for DNA tests on Ancestry.com, reportedly raising concerns about whether their mothers were unknowingly impregnated without their consent with donor sperm.

The Future of Womb Transplants

On 20 November 2024, Louisa Ghevaert attended a Progress Educational Trust event "10 Years of Womb Transplants: What Have We learned? What Does the Future Hold?". This fascinating event looked at the important and pioneering uterine transplant work that has been undertaken over the last 10 years, starting with the world's first successful human womb transplant and live birth in September 2014. Since then, there have been more than 135 uterus transplants around the world, including news of the UK's first womb transplant in 2023. In doing so, uterus transplants offer hope and greater reproductive choice for women whilst raising complex medical, legal and ethical issues.

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