The Glamorous Grind
Where grit meets glamour, and the law is always in style.
Hosted by attorneys Ilona Antonyan and Mila Arutunian of Antonyan Miranda LLP, The Glamorous Grind delivers bold conversations at the intersection of law, lifestyle, and mindset.
Each episode features riveting stories from inside the courtroom, celebrity interviews, and real-life legal battles that shape lives and headlines. From empowerment and entrepreneurship to manifestation and vision boards, we explore the hustle behind the glam with fearless insight.
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The Glamorous Grind
The Legal Maze of IVF: Who Owns Your Embryos After Divorce?
We explore the complex legal landscape of IVF, surrogacy, and embryo ownership with adoption attorney Anna Howard, who brings years of experience helping families navigate reproductive law.
• Embryo ownership after divorce is a legally complex area with limited case precedent
• California has no published case law specifically addressing frozen embryo disputes
• Clinics require disposition forms but these are often signed hastily without proper consideration
• Courts generally favor the party not wanting parenthood but exceptions exist
• Known donors (friends/family) require careful legal contracts to prevent future claims
• Surrogacy arrangements need comprehensive legal protection addressing potential conflicts
• Psychological evaluations help ensure surrogates understand the emotional implications
• Embryo disposition options include donation, scientific research, or compassionate transfer
• Major employers increasingly offer fertility benefits as part of compensation packages
• Approximately 1 in 12 people experience fertility challenges when attempting parenthood
Think of your IVF agreement like a prenup for your embryos. Courts do not want to decide this for you later. Preparation speaks volumes - stability and preparedness go hand in hand.
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🎙️ Hosts: Ilona Antonyan & Mila Arutunian
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Imagine this you freeze your embryos with your spouse and then you get divorced. Who gets the embryos? If you didn't plan ahead, there could be a messy legal battle in front of you.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Glamorous Grind where ambition meets glam and today's science meets the law. And our guest adoption attorney, anna Howard, has handled hundreds of surrogacy and assisted reproduction cases. She's here to answer the questions people don't even know to ask about IVF.
Speaker 1:And this is personal for me. Ivf helps women who wait later in their career to have children, and it's important to know your rights and how to protect your future.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for being here with us. We're referral partners, but we brought you here to discuss a very interesting subject and that's IVF and kind of the legal aspect of surrogacy kind of the legal aspect of surrogacy.
Speaker 1:So how did you get started in helping families either adopt or go through IVF's process in terms of paperwork.
Speaker 3:Well, it all started when I was a Girl Scout. I loved helping people. That just was my joy. And in undergrad I thought I would do work for nonprofits. So I went to New York City and I fundraised for children who are aging out of the foster community In California. We call this juvenile dependency, and it was a light bulb moment. I realized I wanted to be an attorney and so I came back to San Diego and went to USD School of Law with the intention of representing children like with special needs or advocacy within the immigration community. And certainly I was already familiar with juvenile dependency. So I clocked like 200 pro bono hours with juvenile dependency. But within that there's a component of adoption to realize that I could use my law degree to help people grow their family Super joyous.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because I feel like back in the day it was very rare that someone used a surrogate or even got IVF.
Speaker 2:It was very expensive. It was a very exclusive segment of the population that could afford that, would afford that or would even talk about it, and nowadays I feel like even online talk about it, and nowadays I feel like even online, so many young women are talking openly about fertility issues and going through either IVF or surrogacy to help them get pregnant. And I know, generally speaking, in our world right now, fertility issues are through the roof. It's insane the amount of people young people, healthy people who are unable to naturally conceive.
Speaker 1:I think it's not just the infertility issues, but also most women now wait later in life to have children because we're more focused on our careers. The bio clock doesn't stop for you if you choose to take a different path in life, and it's become more popular to freeze your eggs or even create embryos sometime in your early 20s or possibly by your mid 30s.
Speaker 3:You said it all perfectly. I always think about, like the first time I'd heard of a surrogate was like on an Oprah show. And then we had Phoebe on Friends, carrie for her brother, and then we had that Tina Fey movie, baby Mama, and then just recently on Netflix you had the release of the dramatic retelling of the first IVF baby, louise Brown, 1978. But I think you're exactly right. Especially for women who are going into white collar professions, the ability to have the finances to freeze eggs and then start parenthood later is more and more possible. And we haven't even talked about the gay community. There's a huge need to have sperm banks, egg banks, and to be able to interact with surrogates to become parents, and it's a really cool area of law. It's like one of the few that's not super adversarial, it's cooperative if we do it correctly.
Speaker 1:There are different things that happen from the medical perspective. You just go freeze your eggs that's called IVF. There's also freezing creating the embryos that's also called IVF. And then there's a surrogacy that goes through the same clinic. You need a lawyer for that part of it. Generally, if you're just freezing your eggs or creating embryos, the agencies or the medical doctors you see will have their boilerplate standard contracts you sign. If you talk about the issues you look out for that would potentially prevent litigation down the road.
Speaker 3:So I would just categorize it as like three different legal considerations. So at the jump, when we're creating an embryo, we're pulling sperm from some man, we're pulling eggs from a woman. If this are hypothetical, parents have gone to a sperm bank. You're exactly right. There's going to be a pre-written, pre-signed contract that's pretty comprehensive and they're at an arm's distance with their sperm source or, in some cases, their egg source. But if they know the person who's going to provide that genetic material if the sperm donor is somebody's cousin or friend the clinic is going to be really uneasy interacting with that embryo until a law firm has reassured the clinic. This is on the up and up. We have a robust contract here. So ideally, if we're using a donor for genetic material, there's a good contract in place, either because the contract was pre-written, because we're working with a bank, or because a law firm was retained at the marching orders of the clinic to help them facilitate the contract.
Speaker 3:When you see litigation resulting from the donation side, it's perhaps because the relationship was too entrenched, like it was a brother. So he's both the genetic father but he's interacting with the child as uncle. But then if there's guardianship scenario, or the brother is really now just interacting with the child as if that's his own offspring, then having a contract make really clear what the reality is going to look like if this child is going to see sperm donor at family picnics or their next door neighbors. To really get clear and to inform the families. Hey, we've seen this happen when under 76-11, right, two years of holding the child out as their own, you can actually present a constitutional claim to have an interaction with the child. But I will say in all of my time I've never seen that.
Speaker 2:Just from a bystander perspective.
Speaker 3:I'm curious.
Speaker 2:What's the penalty on a breach of a contract like that? Let's say you have an uncle who is pretending to be an uncle, but he's actually the biological dad, and then he just can't take it anymore because he loves the baby so much and he goes and tells the kid, I'm actually your dad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've seen that the penalty or like the breach what would be the consequence? It's really delicate because you are talking about people who are potentially like good friends or family members. Let's talk about the ones where it's a surrogate who's having conflict with the intended parents that she was caring for. And the one that can come up is what if she terminates the pregnancy but the parents didn't want her to? Or flip it, the parents have said, look, it's our discretionary call. Or flip it the parents have said look, it's our discretionary call. If we find out that this embryo has major abnormalities and difficulties, then we're going to ask you to terminate the pregnancy. I mean, there's a litany of issues that could come up medically that could invite the parents to say like, let's terminate the pregnancy If she has a change of heart and she's like nope, I want to carry this pregnancy to full term. What that looks like is her asserting her right in California now to do what she wants with her body regarding termination, but they would simultaneously say well, you've breached contract. So each case is taken like one at a time.
Speaker 3:Given these really significant rights that we're talking about the right to parenthood, but the right to bodily autonomy I don't see it. I'm not the litigator, but we talk about it in depth and the way that it can be avoided. I don't see it. I'm not the litigator, but we talk about it in depth and the way that it can be avoided. I think what you were maybe going to ask is that most clinics will, most they are all obligated to put the parents through and put the potential woman who's going to carry the pregnancy through a psychological evaluation, so not just a medical evaluation.
Speaker 3:Is her uterus even capable to have an embryo introduced into it? But does she have the wherewithal to give deference to the parents if they're going to ask her to terminate the pregnancy? Is she aware of what it feels like to give birth? So most clinics will not work with a woman who has not already had a baby and who has experienced motherhood. But in the early days of this practice area we didn't have these protocols, and so there's some case law that was put in place. I was curious for myself too, because your firm does a lot of family law. I imagine you've seen this You've had to litigate this where the husband and wife have created embryos, they've had a couple of children and now they're divorcing and there's an argument brewing about who's going to have ownership of those embryos. I mean, I can speak to it, but I imagine it's come across your plate already.
Speaker 1:Well, we can share our experiences. My understanding is that what happens is if both parents do not agree for the child to be born, then if one person does it, the other person is still on the hook, but then they have to litigate their child support and other obligations between themselves. Generally, if someone knows of the other person's intent to have a child, then they would get a restraining order so that the clinic wouldn't be able to release the embryos or do anything with them.
Speaker 3:Do you know we're in a bit of a vacuum here. It's wild to me that California hasn't put a published case on the record yet that really addresses the ownership of embryos. Now we can pull from other jurisdictions and other states, but what we have to draw on are cases of stored sperm, and it's hard to apply that where you only have one owner, to these cases. Where there are two owners of that genetic material. The clinics are legally bound to have the parents sign a form that says this is what we want to have happen if one of us dies, if both of us dies or if we go through divorce. But how much they really looked at that form is up for discussion. Was it a contract of adhesion? Did they have time to take it home to look over with an attorney? Almost never. I mean, I've never heard of that.
Speaker 3:And so the case law generally agrees with what you just described, which is the person not wanting to experience parenthood will control. Usually we don't force parenthood on someone who doesn't want to have children. But there are a couple cases out of different states Reber and Stravinsky I think where the court actually sided with an infertile woman who said look, this was my only chance to have my own genetic material. After we made these embryos, I went through chemo and radiation. There is no way that I can have parenthood now, save for adoption, which is different. Who considered the person not wanting to have parenthood but then nevertheless granted ownership of the embryos to the woman who is otherwise not going to be able to experience parenthood, which I think was the right way to decide? That hypothetical woman could then certainly set up a step-parent adoption, which would terminate the rights of the other individual. There could also be a lot of coordination about like visitation and playing around with support to make it an easier.
Speaker 1:Yes, If they don't hate each other, then they could have agreed that, hey, once this child is born, I'll never file, you know, I'll terminate your parental rights. They can enter into a contract. That here's the consideration. If you ever file any sort of paternity action, there'll be judgment entered of non-paternity or that. I'm not going to have any legal obligations.
Speaker 3:You could potentially try and say well, although the embryos were created together, we're going to now treat this guy as the sperm donor.
Speaker 1:Correct, yeah, so we do the paperwork pretty much that's right, the sperm donor.
Speaker 3:Correct. Yeah, so we do the paperwork pretty much. That's right. I've had three different cases where one person died and then they went back to the surviving. You know, widow or widower approached the clinic to pull the embryos and the clinic's like, oh, you wrote something that said we got to thaw this embryo now If one of you dies we, oh, my God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or we need to donate to anonymous. I'm rolling my eyes because the semantics really frustrates. Right To say donate, that's so ambiguous. Donate to a bank, to anonymous recipients? Can we donate to known recipients? Does it have to be arm's distance or could it be like the family? And so three times we've had to get a court order that will supersede whatever the clinic has on file. Their default. We call it a disposition or a consent form.
Speaker 1:They also have the one where you initial off on it being sent to university for research as well.
Speaker 3:Right, right, yeah, there's now like six different things the family should be presented with as options. But, what's more, you have to wonder how carefully they're really thinking about such a weird hypothetical. When people are signing these contracts, they are not thinking about what if I get a terminal illness? What if we have two kids and we've got three left? Or what if we've never even had our first kid? And then there's a catastrophic motorcycle accident is one that I encountered.
Speaker 2:I would anticipate. All of these situations are so fact intensive that it would have to just be evaluated on a case by case basis by the courts, because you really can't anticipate all of these things in advance. And so my question is in those three cases you've had, have the courts sided with the?
Speaker 3:widow or widowers they have.
Speaker 3:I think a cool part of our practice is these courts probate and family law or family court.
Speaker 3:They're courts of equity and if you can demonstrate that it serves the best interest of the vulnerable party, I think that you can have some success there. We have to respect that. The clinics need to adhere to the laws that bind them. There's all sorts of WIC and HHSA and they have to follow their documentation and follow what their attorney is recommending that they do. But the attorney they probably have on retainer is like a medical malpractice attorney who's not really going to be versed in the nuance of parental rights.
Speaker 3:I was going to say I just wish that for every year that a family pays for another 12 months of storage of their embryos, that at that juncture they were invited to revisit what their consent form says, cause they signed it like ages ago. It's usually signed the moment before like a medical procedure happens and payment happens and it's buried in some paperwork that says they promise they won't sue the clinic, but where's the financial incentive for the clinic to do that? It's like the remote chance that something goes kind of amok and then they have to use their counsel to address it.
Speaker 1:In terms of when parents going, when two parents are going through a divorce who have frozen embryos together, whether or not the clinic is going to release it to one parent without the consent of the others depends how well organized they are with their paperwork, with their documentation, if they have processes that they follow, because some clinics are very organized, they have things electronically, they won't do anything without both party signatures and some are very disorganized and they will not check. They'll not go back and pull that document from eight, 10 years ago and see that it requires both signatures.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly. And again, where's their incentive to ever do that? They're just going to want to collect payment for the continued storage of the genetic material. There was another case where a set of parents passed and they had a minor child, a little boy, and then they also had frozen embryos, and the court ultimately assigned ownership of the embryos to him because he would be. You know, your wealth goes to your child, if you have any. So when he turned 18, he had a horrible decision that he had to make about what is he meant to do with his stored genetic siblings, right? What's he going to do with his stored genetic siblings, right? What's he going to do with those embryos? That's a lot to put on the shoulders of an 18-year-old. That's why I wish these consent forms went deeper.
Speaker 2:So if there are stored embryos that people decide they're not going to use them, what can they do with them? What avenues are available for people?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the owners of the embryos, because it is property, and that's the other thing. That's just wild. We're really not talking about custody and so we're not talking about adoption, because adoption is when a child is in the world, is a person. So we are talking about ownership and then donation of material. They can donate to a known recipient, couple or person, and a contract would be required by the clinic before they would redo their paperwork about who is the owner of this particular embryo. They can also donate anonymously, usually facilitated by the clinic. Just as we have sperm banks and we have the advent of egg banks, I think we're going to see the advent of embryo banks Next route. So if it's not donated to known recipients or anonymous recipients or to a bank which indirectly it's going to be different recipients, then you can look at donation to scientific research, which Planned Parenthood got a lot of heat about because they were using material that had the potential for life in scientific research and so it impacted all their grants. And then you also have the option of thawing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not sure if this was AI generated article that I recently saw or not, but they said they showed a robot that can now carry the child. Yeah, is that real?
Speaker 3:I don't know, but I imagine, I imagine it's, I think in our lifetime that's going to be a future legal career Cloning and that's how family law may change in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know. So it's interesting. What's interesting to me is like part of me like shrieks at all of this and it's just like very uncomfortable. And then part of me is like am I uncomfortable just because it's uncertain? And I think anytime there was a new scientific finding or anything new in science I mean something as simple as a robotic arm that can move like your own People were like oh my God, that's so weird, right? And I'm wondering if in 20 years, this is all going to seem normal.
Speaker 1:So for any woman who wants to freeze her eggs or any male who wants to freeze a sperm, do they need to see a lawyer like yourself to draft any paperwork?
Speaker 3:No, if you're going to store your genetic material and I always think that's a great idea, and I also think for all the single ladies because you mentioned that you've got a lot of women listening to this who are in law school I would say, if you freeze it, your partner will come the moment you're getting ready to just protect parenthood. You're like I'm in my 20s, I'm going to do my career, but I'm going to store my eggs so that when I'm in my 30s or I'm getting into my early 40s, I can return to parenthood with this material. No, you can do that directly at a clinic. The clinic will have you sign a consent form that says what should we do if you're profoundly sick or you pass? I wish at that point people hired an attorney to really help them think through that disposition form. But no, they don't need an attorney, they just need to budget for this expense.
Speaker 3:Obviously it is more invasive to store eggs. We have to do. It's an outpatient procedure, but it's still general anesthesia. It's still about two months of preparation medications. I really haven't looked at the cost, but I would say it's certainly gonna be more than 10 grand, to put it mildly.
Speaker 1:The younger you are, the more eggs once they stimulate your ovaries using medication, which is expensive. It's about 5 to 6 grand. And more often than not, it's not covered by insurance, although the actual procedure itself may be covered by some insurance companies.
Speaker 3:If there's a medical diagnosis they can point to to demonstrate why it's necessary so preemptive. There's big companies that will pay for it or help with the cost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's more and more employers that are now covering that on insurance Good right, which I think that it's a huge. It's not that women like want to build their careers and be feminists and that's why they're waiting longer. It's because you cannot live on one salary anymore. Really, that's the reason women are waiting longer because they have to build careers so that they can literally eat and have a roof over their heads.
Speaker 1:Right For anyone who wants to create embryos. Do they need to hire a lawyer like yourself, and why?
Speaker 3:If they're working with donated genetic material. So let's have it be a heterosexual couple, let's say it's a man or wife, and they're using an egg donor because she can't, she's done IVF and she's been unsuccessful in getting any eggs that are viable the clinic will demand a contract. Now, if they used an egg from a bank, the contract's already pre-written the egg donor signs. Or sperm donor same scenario. But if they're working with somebody's sister or best friend who's going to provide eggs, they will need a contract. The clinic is going to be uncomfortable interacting with that genetic material that came from a donor without seeing legal paperwork. So that is why, if they're going to work with a surrogate, the clinic will also demand let's see the contract, prove to me that this is legal, that nobody's being exploited or taken advantage of, and they'll refer to it's called a clearance letter. Usually that is two attorneys saying we represented these guys, they know what they're doing, they've carefully given this their consideration and we believe that this is compliant with the law. Carefully given this their consideration and we believe that this is compliant with the law.
Speaker 3:What should someone do if there's a family that wants to experience parenthood? I think telling everybody that they can, since this is less stigmatic now building your family through all these different means, because sometimes there might be somebody who says, like I have stored embryos that I want to donate to somebody, or I've had an easy time with pregnancies and I would love to be a surrogate and be compensated receive like 30 to 60,000 for her efforts, because it's about a 12-month experience when you include the preparation and then recovery from a delivery For women, very unlikely that two moms would need a surrogate, but they do need a sperm donor and then when baby's born, they may need a confirmatory adoption, because in California we can put two moms on the birth certificate but if they go to another jurisdiction or they travel out of country to just have it on a court order that the woman who didn't deliver is a mother, it carries more weight than just a birth certificate.
Speaker 1:A long time ago, before the laws have changed, I represented a Russian couple. They were both women. One carried the child and she was on a birth certificate. The other one it was, I think, her egg, but they had no court orders from Russia. They were both here. She was in the child's life like the child was six at a time and then when they were going through a divorce and she didn't get any rights at that time under the law. Thank you for educating all of us and a lot of our viewers about the surrogacy process and the options and how to protect themselves from a legal perspective. I think it was interesting. You've said that it's never early, too early to start.
Speaker 3:You can do it in your 20s, 30s and never too late either, and for folks who are contemplating both they want parenthood but they're open to adoption or surrogacy I think just telling as many people as possible, because you never know, you guys can say, oh, we actually just spoke with an attorney who does this. Then talking to a lawyer can help the family figure out what half dozen agencies should I interview, what clinic should I go to, what are the articles that I should read up on. I think just telling everyone and not being private about it. The less we can stigmatize these alternative paths to parenthood, I think the better the whole community is going to be.
Speaker 2:And I just want to add to that because I experienced some issues with infertility and I'll say, even for me, like I'm a very strong person, but that was pretty debilitating because I felt like my body should be able to just create human life, because that's what I was born to do. And why isn't it working? And I think a lot of women feel that way. And I think the more we have these types of conversations, the more we encourage people to accept that that's okay and not spend time being upset about it, but instead taking a more proactive approach of like what can we do? This is no longer stigmatized.
Speaker 3:And remember that your value is more than your reproductive organ. We don't look sideways at people who wear eyeglasses or who have a pacemaker or who have you know some other medical condition, and I think of these organs as just that. The stats are like one in 12. People who want to have parenthood are going to experience some difficulties with it. So knowing that you're one in 12, I think there's comfort in that.
Speaker 1:Here's your glam tip. Think of your IVF agreement like a prenup for your embryos Courts. Do not want to decide this for you later and you don't want to be in litigation and show up polished for every meeting court agency, even your doctor's office Optics matter Preparation speaks volumes, and stability and preparedness go hand in hand.
Speaker 1:Ivf is a beautiful thing for those who want to have children later in life and focus on their career, or for those who cannot have children and we're lucky to be living in this century with technological advances that make it possible. But knowing your legal rights is equally important to protect yourself and your future.
Speaker 2:And remember our episodes are dropping every other week now, so look out for our new episode in two weeks. Have you gone through?
Speaker 1:IVF, surrogacy or adoption. Drop your story in the comments or DM us. We'll want to hear about your journey.
