The Social Security Administration won't provide benefits to the in-vitro, post-mortem child of an football-player who was conceived from sperm frozen before her father began chemotherapy. Welcome to the future, I guess.
For the past five years, Chappell, a single parent living on a teacher's salary, has fought the Social Security Administration to get survivor benefits for their daughter.
The Social Security Administration says the case has yet to be decided at SSA's Baltimore headquarters, but the agency cautions that because Sayana's parents were never married, government attorneys have no law or precedents to guide them. That issue makes the case unique, the first in Washington and possibly the nation.
Laws pertaining to children of deceased parents have changed little since survivor benefits for children were first paid in 1940, and surely haven't kept pace with how technology has redefined reproduction.
