Families win legal struggle to inherit frozen embryos under one-child policy

Under China’s one-child policy, losing an only child during old age is devastating – individuals are too old to give birth and raise another child yet they face a future where they will have no one to rely upon after retiring, unless the only child left frozen embryos that would enable grandchildren to be born.

Two families from northeast China are fighting to inherit such embryos and they have taken that struggle to court. Their children were a young couple who died in a car accident before they could finish a course of in vitro fertilisation, but they did leave four frozen embryos in storage at a hospital.

The court in Wuxi has now ruled those embryos should be taken care of by both families.

A previous court ruling dismissed the suit, as embryos are not considered property that can be inherited under Chinese law. The deceased couple had also signed an agreement authorising the hospital to discard the embryos.

The new ruling has taken into consideration the fact that both families have lost their only child and allowing them to keep the embryos may help to alleviate their distress.

“The pain is too much to have your child dying before you,” the judge in the case said in the ruling. “An embryo carries a family line. It is a reminder to the child’s existence and therefore for the parents to mourn for their loss.”