Whose Child Am I? Dilemmas of Posthumous Adoptions and the Posthumous ChildHeather FayeLynn Boehm
Program: Legal Studies: Capstone-Thesis: Master of Arts (MA)
Awarded: February 2018
Capstone Instructor: Professor Darren A. Waters
Abstract: The once traditional nuclear family structure has evolved in light of society’s technological and medical advancements, leading to the formation of various non-traditional families. The process of defining family structures has become a struggle as the desire to belong to these familial units combined advancements in gamete donation or extraction, posthumously conceived children, and posthumous adoptions, has created limitless possibilities in the familiar structure. These new familial structures have created new-fangled means of establishing parent-child relationships and this conundrum leads us to contemplate what rights children born of these unions are entitled.
The founding fathers could not have conceptualized the advancements in science or changes of family structures, or created laws governing the rights afforded to them though their parent-child relationship. Hence, much of the determination of “whose child I am,” falls to interpretations of laws that were not specifically developed to address these issues. In seeking to answer, “Whose child am I,” this paper establishes that the doctrine of judicial precedent, fails to account for the creation of non-traditional families by means of posthumously conceived children or posthumous adoptions. It further asserts that changes in current laws are the only way to establish these familial units and determine what rights children born of these unions would be entitled.
