There is nothing surprising in the statement that surrogate parenting and the business of assisting people conceive and create children are growth industries around the world. As technological advances shrink the distance between people, that “progress” has helped people find alternatives to bearing or creating their own children.

These breakthroughs in technology have allowed procreation to be delayed and are even well along the path to allow the creation of designer infants. The science and industry of making babies obviously involves a multitude of issues, but attorneys need to be particularly mindful about the rights to or ownership of genetic matter in the form of an embryo that has been formed outside of the human body.

The general course of events from which these issues are born has a couple deciding to create an embryo or embryos in vitro. Usually more than one of the created embryos are implanted in the mother and the rest are cryogenically stored. These stored embryos may be used in the event of an unsuccessful pregnancy, or to have more children, or just to keep options open. These unused embryos can give rise to disputes as to their ownership, use and disposition. Often there are contracts entered into between the donors of the genetic material used to create the embryos and the storage facility which is holding the embryos or the enterprise which helped create the embryos in the first place. These agreements, which are not drafted by the couple, can be the source of difficulty later on.