Court battle over frozen embryos could set important precedent

A battle between ex-spouses over frozen embryos that could set a national precedent is scheduled to start Monday in San Francisco Superior Court.

Just days before her wedding in 2010, Lee was diagnosed with breast cancer so she and her new husband agreed to in vitro fertilization and freeze several embryos. And a Chicago appeals court last month ruled in a high-profile case that a woman in a situation similar to Lee’s – she was also left infertile by cancer – could use the embryos despite her ex-boyfriend’s opposition.

Lee, 46, says Findley, who wants the embryos destroyed, would have no parental responsibility. However, when Findley filed for divorce two years ago he made it clear that he wanted the embryos destroyed.

The agreement was signed with the university and stated the embryos would be returned to one of the spouses if the other died, but would be discarded if the couple divorced.

“‘You know at some point, if we have kids from these embryos you should be anxious what I will say to them if you are not generous, ‘” he quoted her as saying.

Mimi Lee is seen in her loft in San Francisco, Calif. on Friday, June 26, 2015. And Findley has testified in pretrial proceedings that he would be troubled psychologically by having a child produced from the embryos, and worries about forced parenting obligations, even though Lee has offered assurances she won’t seek financial support if the embryos produce a child.

Dr. James Goldfarb, division chief of endocrinology and infertility at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, said his institution always has couples sign directives for contingency plans for the embryos in case of an emergency.

“If a child is genetically his … he will participate in the child’s life”, Crawford said.

The California case, which could make new law in the state, draws comparisons to actress Sofia Vergara’s legal battle with ex-fiance Nick Loeb, who wants to use their frozen embryos despite Vergara’s reservations, and an agreement calling for the destruction of the embryos if the relationship ended, which it did in 2014.

Findley, thin and pale and on crutches because of foot injury, told the court that Lee once asked him to give her have the condominium they had purchased on Nob Hill with mutual funds.

He testified that Lee began to look into surrogacy in 2011, and he said he expressed reluctance. But Whittier Law School’s Daar said that waiver “has no legal meaning”.

Findley is expected to return to the stand later in the bench trial, which is scheduled to end Thursday.