NPR reports on a Supreme Court case to be argued today regarding what "survivor" and "child" means as it applies to children conceived through in vitro fertilization after the death of the father. There is no consensus on whether the children are entitled to the father's Social Security benefits.
. . . under the 1939 Social Security Act, survivors benefits go to any
child of a covered individual, and the word child is "plainly
defined" as the biological offspring of a married couple. She contends
that the section of the law dealing with state inheritance statutes
only kicks in when the "biological parentage is disputed."
Last
year, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia agreed with Capato,
saying that "undisputed biological children of a deceased wage earner
and his widow [are] 'children' " under the meaning of the Social
Security law. The court noted that this was a case "where
medical-scientific technology has advanced faster than the regulatory
process."
The Obama administration appealed to the U.S.
Supreme Court, contending that the lower court had ignored more
than 70 years of government policy dictating how to determine the
eligibility of survivor benefits for children.
In
its brief setting out its arguments, the government maintains that
posthumously conceived children fall outside the class of children
entitled to survivors benefits because "they were brought into being by
a surviving parent with the knowledge that the deceased biological
parent will not be able to contribute wages for their support."
The
administration also makes a states' rights argument, contending that
"child-parent relationships are generally determined by state law" and
that nothing in the Social Security Act "suggests that Congress
intended to depart from that approach."
The case is Astrue v. Capato. Click here detail from ScotusBlog.
- Who is a Decendent's Child?
