Wealth Matters: Fertility Treatments Produce Heirs Their Parents Never Knew

While this may sound bizarre, posthumously conceived children can become a quandary for the rich and the not-so-rich alike. The problem is always about money. The rich worry about who will get their assets after they are dead, while people of more meager means have turned to the courts in the hope of collecting federal benefits.

“We’re going to see a flurry of activity on this, because new technologies are ballooning,” said Sharon L. Klein, managing director at Wilmington Trust and chairwoman of the trusts, estates and surrogate’s courts committee of the New York City Bar Association.

“You read about women in their late 20s and early 30s who are saving their eggs and want to focus on their careers and haven’t met the right partner yet,” she said. The woman’s eggs could be used to produce a child even if the woman never wanted the eggs used after her death.

The law is clear on one thing: when a trust document does not address the issue, Ms. Klein said, “children born with the new technology are entitled to inherit with the same rights as a natural-born child.”

Consider the example of a sick person who, before undergoing chemotherapy that will cause sterility, donates sperm or eggs to be frozen, in hopes of having children later. The patient intends to have the children after recovery. But should the patient die without something in writing stating this intent, the surviving partner could have a claim on that genetic material and could use it to produce a child.

Other possibilities exist. A couple who has embryos left over after having children through in vitro fertilization could, instead of destroying them, donate them to a woman, essentially giving her a child they created. That could have unintended consequences. “It’s not inconceivable now that if the father and mother of that embryo were to strike it rich, the child born of that other woman could say, ‘Those are my genetic parents,’ ” said John M. Olivieri, a partner at White & Case. And if the child says that, chances are he or she would ask for a share of the genetic parents’ wealth.

“Posthumous reproduction is the perfect storm of competing interests,” said Susan M. Wolf, professor of law, medicine and public policy at the University of Minnesota School of Law. “There’s the surviving partner who wants to reproduce, the interests of the deceased while they were alive or as they memorialized them, the pre-existing kids who don’t want their interest diluted and finally the kids who are brought into the picture but who may be financially most at risk.”

Several lawsuits have already tested this issue, and many more have been settled privately, lawyers said.

In 2007, the New York County Surrogate’s Court decided in the case In re Martin B. that two posthumously conceived children could benefit from a trust created by their grandfather, Martin B., for his two sons and any grandchildren. (Real names were not used in the suit to protect the children.)

The case was brought jointly by Martin B.’s wife and the widow of their son, whose frozen sperm had been used to conceive two children three and five years after his death. They wanted to know whether the posthumously conceived children were descendants for the purpose of the trust.

The answer decided whether tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars from the estate of Martin B. went to those children or if all of it was divided among the surviving son and his children.

What made this case even more intriguing was that Martin B.’s wife had the ability to divide the assets in the trusts her husband set up as she saw fit. Lawyers on both sides said even if her posthumously conceived grandchildren were not considered, she could have cut her living son out of his inheritance.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 30, 2013

An earlier version of this article included outdated information about the status of New York legislation that would set guidelines for the inheritance rights of posthumously conceived children. The state Senate did not take up the legislation in the most recent session, which ended in June; it is not awaiting Senate action in this session. 

Fox May Produce Clinton Biopic Reviled by G.O.P.

While NBC has come under heavy fire, especially from Republican critics, for agreeing to broadcast the series, the project may wind up being produced by another company: Fox Television Studios, the sister company of the conservative favorite, Fox News.

Leslie Oren, a spokesman for FTVS, as the studio is known, confirmed that NBC is in “the early stages” of discussions to bring the Fox unit in as the production company on the as yet unnamed mini-series, which will star Diane Lane as Mrs. Clinton.

“There is no deal yet,” Ms. Oren said. But should a deal be completed, FTVS would become the distributor of the film internationally. FTVS is the production arm of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment group.

It would also become something of an odd partner in what has become a contentious project, especially after Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, threatened to keep presidential debates involving Republican candidates off both NBC and its news channel MSNBC, if it went ahead with what he called a “promotional movie about the life of Hillary Clinton.”

But criticism of NBC’s decision to buy the film has also come from inside its news division, as two correspondents, Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell, have spoken out publicly suggesting the film would damage the reputation of NBC News.

Mr. Todd, the chief White House correspondent for the network, said, “this mini-series is a total nightmare for NBC News.” Ms. Mitchell, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC, called the movie “a really bad idea given the timing."

NBC has been in the cross hairs of conservative critics for some time, mainly because its news division also runs MSNBC, which also makes no secret of its political bent — liberal rather than conservative. Both Mr. Todd and Ms. Mitchell host programs on MSNBC.

The position of NBC’s Entertainment division has been that the project is being produced entirely separately from the news division, and that there is a firewall between the divisions, with the news organization in no way responsible for the content.

Whether an association with a Fox company reduces the heat on the Clinton project seems unlikely, however, especially because in this case the criticism has also come from NBC News itself. One longtime senior news executive, who asked not to be identified criticizing the network, called the movie “wildly inappropriate for NBC to be doing.”

That reaction is largely based on the presumption that Mrs. Clinton will be a candidate in 2016. It is not based on the script for the film, which has not been written.

The back story of the project underscores the automatic interest that surrounds Mrs. Clinton, as well as the complicated corporate arrangements that often accompany Hollywood projects.

In this case, the project began as an idea hatched by Sherryl Clark, an independent producer. She took the idea of a Clinton movie to a company named Endgame, which finances and produces television programs and movies. The chairman of Endgame, James D. Stern, agreed to pick up the project with both he and Ms. Clark attached as executive producers.

They sought out a writer/director for the project as well as a star. In both cases they attracted Oscar nominees. Courtney Hunt, who wrote and directed the well-regarded independent film “Frozen River,” signed on to the project. Also, Diane Lane, who was nominated for an Academy Award for “Unfaithful,” agreed to play Mrs. Clinton.

A spokeswoman for Endgame, Gina Lang, said the project was then pitched around Hollywood to several broadcast and cable networks. Another executive involved in the project said several networks expressed interest. But NBC offered the best deal.

The chairman of NBC Entertainment, Robert Greenblatt, announced the acquisition of the project on July 27, one day after the deal with Endgame was concluded. Mr. Greenblatt said at the time that NBC would ensure the movie was on the air before Mrs. Clinton formally declared for the presidency to avoid any demands from other candidates for equal time.

With Too Much Rain in the South, Too Little Produce on the Shelves

The tomatoes in Tennessee are splitting. Tobacco in North Carolina is drowning. And watermelons, which seem as if they would like all the rain that has soaked the South, have taken perhaps the biggest hit of all.

Some watermelon farmers in South Georgia say they have lost half their crop. The melons that did survive are not anywhere as good as a Southern watermelon ought to be.

“They are awful,” said Daisha Frost, 39, who works in Decatur, Ga. “And this is the time of year when they should be the bomb.”

Day after day, the rains have come to a part of the country that relies on the hot summer sun for everything from backyard tomato sandwiches to billions of dollars in commercial row crops, fruit and peanuts.

While the contiguous United States as a whole is about only 6 percent above its normal rainfall this year, Southern states are swamped. Through June, Georgia was 34 percent above normal, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center. Both South Carolina and North Carolina were about 25 percent above normal. Alabama’s rainfall was up 22 percent.

The weather is a particular shock because more than two-thirds of the region was abnormally dry or suffering a drought last year.

Although the total cost to farmers has yet to be tallied, agricultural officials in several states in the Deep South predict severe losses this year that could be in the billions of dollars.

“Nobody’s ever seen it this wet this long,” said Randy Ellis, a Georgia farmer who grows wheat and watermelons, the latter of which end up at East Coast grocery stores.

He usually pulls about 60,000 pounds of melons from an acre of land. This year, he said, he barely got 30,000 pounds. What is worse, the cooler, rainy weather meant the crop was ready after the important Fourth of July window, when prices are at their peak.

Standing water has made cornfields look like rice paddies in some parts of the rural South. Mold is growing on ears of corn, and in some fields entire stalks have toppled. Late blight, a funguslike pathogen, is creeping into tomato fields early and with unusual vigor.

Even though the Georgia pecan crop will not be harvested until fall, there are already worries that the rain will bring on a rash of the fungus commonly called scab disease. Experts are predicting that the crop could be about 15 million pounds lower this year.

There are a few pluses. Irrigation costs are down, and the rain has been surprisingly good for the look of Georgia peaches.

Here in the part of central Georgia where Duke Lane Jr. grows 30 varieties on about 10,000 acres, his fields have already taken on as much water to date as they usually do in an entire year.

“This is something that has never been on our radar,” he said.

Still, the peaches are bigger than usual and shaped perfectly. He had a single peach on his desk that weighed more than a pound.

But even though those peaches look good, the water has diluted the sugar content.

“The flavor is just not there,” said Doris Westmoreland, who works at Lane Southern Orchards. “It’s like having a mouthful of cotton.”

The rain is doing more than compromising quality and bringing on disease. Some fields are so wet that farmers have not been able to get equipment into the fields to harvest.

“With fruit and vegetables, you’ve got to hand-harvest it when it’s ready,” said Charles Hall of the Georgia Watermelon Association. “If you can’t get to it, you lose it.”

Some farmers report wheat sprouting before it can be harvested, and peanut farmers in Alabama, who rely on heavy applications of chemicals, have missed crucial application windows because fields have been too wet to navigate, said Randy Griggs, the executive director of the Alabama Peanut Producers Association.

Peanut harvest usually begins in late August and runs into September, so there is hope that fields might dry out by then.

But Jake Crouch, a climatologist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., is not hopeful.

“Whenever we get in a pattern like this, we kind of stay in the status quo,” he said. “When we’re hot and dry, we stay hot and dry. When we’re wet, we stay wet.”

Alan Blinder contributed reporting from Atlanta.

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