Inheritance rights of the child concieved by post-mortem artificial insemination

Abstract

The present study addresses the juridical problem related to inheritance law of the child born from artificial insemination held after the father’s death. The proposed problem is to learn which Brazilian legal and principle support the child conceived by artificial insemination post mortem has. As a hypothesis we suggest that the analogous interpretation of article 1.597 of the Brazilian Civil Code (BCC) together with the extensive interpretation of article 1.799 BCC grants the child conceived by post-mortem artificial insemination the right of inheritance and legal warranty. The general objective is to analyze the possibilities to hold the rights of inheritance law to the child conceived by post-mortem artificial insemination. The specific objectives are: to briefly address inheritance law, its primary concepts (death and others) and main principles; to explain about family planning and to write about assisted human reproduction presenting the first case that has been judged granting the right to perform the said insemination with the late husband’s genetic materials. The methodology is the systematic analysis of the articles 1.597 e 1.799 both from the Civil Code together with constitutional principles and a bibliographical review with case law and doctrine analysis using the deductive method. This article closes suggesting that the hypothesis is confirmed since it is necessary an analogous and extensive interpretation of the studied articles of the Civil Code to grant inheritance rights in cases such as the post-mortem artificial insemination.