A widow has been told that she cannot use her late husband’s frozen sperm to have his baby because of a paperwork blunder made more than a decade ago.
Jade Payne, 35, from Brackley, Northamptonshire, has been told that she has to prove to her fertility clinic that her husband Daniel, who died two years ago aged 35, wanted her to have his child through IVF.
She was told by TFP Oxford Fertility that she will have to take the case to the High Court before they release her husband’s sperm, which was frozen in 2010.
The couple, who were together for ten years, were planning to have a child before he died of a brain tumour in December 2019. The dispute centres on a “technicality” of her name not being on his original sperm donation documents, despite more recent ones having her signature on them.
She said that it was “disgusting” that she had to prove to the court that her husband would have wanted her to have a child.
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“It’s something we both wanted,” she said. “We were planning it together and then he died before we got the chance.”
She now has to collect letters from family, friends, a GP and some of her husband’s carers to prove his wish for her to have his children and said that legal costs could run into thousands.
He froze his sperm 11 years ago before testicular cancer treatment. The couple were planning to start IVF before they found out that a brain tumour he had been living with since 2006 had grown.
Mr Payne was “certain” he had included his wife’s name on the sperm donation document but it emerged after his death that he was mistaken.
The couple had signed documents to start NHS-funded IVF at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford in 2019 and faced no issues with the missing signature, but after his death she was told that there was not sufficient evidence that she was entitled to the sperm.
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“We’d chosen baby names, talked about how we wanted the nursery to look, what pram we’d buy, we knew exactly what we wanted,” she said.
“I do understand the legality of not having my name on the original document . . . Even so, he and I have both signed documents since then and you’d think common sense would prevail.”
The charity Brain Tumour Research is helping her to raise funds for the court battle. TFP Oxford Fertility was contacted for comment.
