Earlier we talked about the equal division of property during a divorce, and what factors go into how the court decides who gets what. Today we will be looking a specific case that has a lot of twists and turns.
In the divorce case of Reber v, Reiss, the property being divided is DNA, which is weird to some but to other something more valuable than the house because it can relate to a later pregnancy.
In this case, the court is giving custody of pre-embryos that have been frozen to one of the parties of the divorce. Since they did not sign any agreement saying who gets the embryos in the event of a separation or divorce, it is totally up to the court to decide who gets them. The husband of the marriage was Bret Reber who was arguing that since the wife has received chemotherapy for breast cancer, she did not have the physical ability to procreate biologically, which in layman’s terms mean she can’t have kids. The court ruled that the evidence was sufficient enough on the husband’s side, and the court awarded Mr. Reber the frozen embryos for future use. See the cite Reber v. Reiss 42 A.3d 1131 (Pa. Super 2012) for future research.