From In re Marriage of Fabos & Olsen, decided today by the Colorado Court of Appeals (written by Judge Michael Berger and joined by Judges Jaclyn Casey Brown & Sueanna Johnson), in which the wife (Fabos) and the husband (Olsen) were "disput[ing] the disposition of their cryogenically frozen pre-embryos after their divorce":
[W]e review the district court's award of the parties' pre-embryos to wife based on its application of the multi-factor balancing test from In re Marriage of Rooks (Colo. 2018) …. Rooks resolved a dispute between one spouse who wanted to implant pre-embryos to have children and the other spouse who wanted to destroy the pre-embryos to avoid becoming a genetic parent. The supreme court recognized that the parties' constitutionally based interests "in either achieving or avoiding genetic parenthood" formed the underpinnings of the analysis. Rooks, however, did not address, as part of its balancing test, the issue of one party's desire to donate the pre-embryos versus the other party's desire to destroy them.
This case centers on a dispute between one spouse [here, the wife] who wants to donate the pre-embryos to another couple because of her religious belief that they are human lives and must be preserved and the other spouse who wants to destroy the pre-embryos to avoid procreation. Therefore, this case presents an issue not addressed by Rooks: how to account for one party's religious beliefs as part of the balancing test…. We reverse the judgment[ and] direct entry of judgment for husband ….
The opinion is long and interesting, but here's an excerpt:
