Monica Farris Linkner, P.C.

    Imagine a childless couple in 1910, or even 1960, being told that someday people could become parents by taking a donated egg, fertilizing it with the husband’s semen in a petrie dish, freezing and storing the resulting embryo for months or years, and then transferring it into the body of an unrelated woman who would carry and give birth to the child!  (Probably as unbelievable as a man walking on the moon….)  Well, we’ve come a long way since the world’s first “test-tube baby,” Louise Brown, was born in 1978!
   
    ARTs, an acronym for Assisted Reproductive Technology, maximizes developments in reproductive medicine to provide a means to parenting for those who otherwise would be unable to have a child they are biologically related to.  Unlike adoption, an ARTs pregnancy is planned for the purpose of enabling a specific person or persons to become parents.

  
    The law of ARTs varies greatly from state to state.  That’s one reason why it’s critical to contact a lawyer with expertise in this field when you are first considering becoming a parent using ARTs.  Monica Farris Linkner P.C. is a leader in Michigan in this new and exciting area of practice.
   
    Ms. Linkner has had extensive training in the legal, medical, social-psychological and ethical aspects of these cases.  She has established relationships with physicians, clinics, psychologists, and knowledgeable lawyers in other states.  Ms. Linkner’s ARTs practice includes

       • consulting with and advising physicians and other fertility specialists;
       • representing intended parents, surrogates, gestational carriers, egg donors and embryo donors to ensure all participants understand their rights and the law that applies to their situation;
       • taking the necessary legal steps to establish the intended parents as the legal parents of a child born using ARTs procedures, and in many cases, avoiding the need for an adoption;
       • addressing issues of insurance coverage and payment of permissible expenses in surrogate and gestational carrier pregnancies;
       • helping the parties determine the pre- and post-birth relationship, if any, they plan to have.

    We are pleased to offer our services to discuss your unique circumstances and to assist you through the ARTs procedures that best meet your needs.  Please call us to schedule a consultation.