Laila Kirkpatrick, Staff Writer
A judge in northern Virginia ruled that embryos are not categorized as divisible property. This ruling rejects previous analysis by the court saying that fertilized eggs could be considered “goods or chattel” based on a 19th-century slave law. Nearly 10 months after closing arguments Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Dontaè L. Bugg wrote in an opinion letter that he would dismiss the partition lawsuit that a cancer survivor filed against her ex-husband. The former wife, Honeyhline Heidemanns, used Jason Heidmann over access to two embryos that froze in 2015 during an in vitro fertilization (IVF) but agreed to leave them in storage during their divorce three years later.
In the trial, she testified that the embryos were her last chance to conceive a biological child after her cancer treatment. Jason Heidmann’s attorney argued that he did not want to become a biological father to a child by force even if he wasn’t required to be a parent. The dispute attracted national attention in 2023 when Judge Richard E. Gardiner referenced a slavery-era law when overruling Jason Heidemann’s pleading that the state’s partition did not include the embryos.
