Posthumous birth

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A posthumous birth is the birth of a child after the death of a parent.^[1] A person born in these circumstances is called a posthumous child or a posthumously born person. Most instances of posthumous birth involve the birth of a child after the death of its father, but the term also is applied to infants delivered after the death of the mother, usually by caesarean section.^[2]

Contents 1 Legal implications of posthumous birth 2 Notable people born posthumously 2.1 Royalty and nobility 2.2 Others 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Legal implications of posthumous birth

Posthumous birth has special implications in law, potentially affecting the child's citizenship and legal rights, inheritance, and order of succession. Legal systems generally include special provisions regarding inheritance by posthumous children and the legal status of such children. For example, Massachusetts law states that a posthumous child is treated as having been living at the death of the parent,^[3] meaning that the child receives the same share of the parent's estate as if the child had been born before the parent's death. United States law holds that posthumous children of U.S. citizens who are born outside the United States have the same rights to citizenship that they would have had if the deceased U.S. citizen parent had been alive at the time of their birth. ^[4]

A posthumous birth has special significance in the case of hereditary monarchies where cognatic primogeniture applies. This principle allows a female to succeed to the throne only if she has no living brothers and no deceased brothers who left surviving legitimate descendants. Before modern medical techniques, if the queen had been pregnant at the time of the king's death and if the living heir were a female, it would have been necessary to wait until the birth of the child to determine its sex, which would in turn have determined the succession. If such a situation were to arise today, it would still be necessary to determine the sex of the foetus. A baby boy would supplant any heiress and be born a monarch, although a regent would have to be appointed until the child comes of age.

Posthumous conception by artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization, whether done using sperm or ova stored before a parent's death or sperm retrieved from a man's corpse, has created new legal issues. ^[3] When a woman is inseminated with her deceased husband's sperm, laws that establish that a sperm donor is not the legal father of the child born as a result of artificial insemination have had the effect of excluding the deceased husband from fatherhood and making the child legally fatherless.^[5] In the United Kingdom before 2000, birth records of children conceived using a dead man's sperm had to identify the infants as fatherless, but in 2000 the government announced that the law would be changed to allow the deceased father's name to be listed on the birth certificate.^[6] In 1986 a New South Wales legal reform commission recommended that the law should recognize the deceased husband as the father of a child born from post-mortem artificial insemination, provided that the woman is his widow and unmarried at the time of birth, but the child should have inheritance rights to the father's estate only if the father left a will that included specific provisions for the child.^[6] In 2001, the Massachusetts Supreme Court was asked to consider whether the father's name should appear on the birth record for a child conceived through artificial insemination after her father's death, as well as whether that child was eligible for U.S. Social Security benefits. The court ruled in January 2002 that a child could be the legal heir of a dead parent if there was a genetic relationship and the deceased parent had both agreed to the posthumous conception and committed to support the child.^[3]

[edit] Notable people born posthumously

[edit] Royalty and nobility

• Shapur II of the Sassanid Empire - born 309, after the death of his father Hormizd II; he is believed to be the only monarch in history who was crowned in utero
• Chlothar II, King of the Franks — born 584; his father Chilperic I had died earlier the same year
• Lothair III, Holy Roman Emperor — born June 1075, shortly after the death of his father Gebhard of Supplinburg
• King Baldwin V of Jerusalem — born 1177, a few months afer the death of his father William of Montferrat, Count of Jaffa and Ascalon
• Arthur I, Duke of Brittany — born 29 March 1187, seven months after the death of his father Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany (a son of King Henry II of England)
• King John I of France — born 15 November 1316, five months after the death of King Louis X. He lived for only six days, but was a king for his entire short life. He is sometimes known as "John the Posthumous".
• Ladislaus the Posthumous, King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, and Duke of Austria — born 22 February 1440, four months after the death of his father King Albert II of Germany
• King Henry VII of England — born 28 January 1457, two months after the death of his father Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond.
• King Sebastian of Portugal — born 20 January 1554, eighteen days after the death of his father João, Crown Prince of Portugal. After his birth, Sebastian immediately became Crown Prince.
• King William III of England and Ireland, aka William II of Scotland — born 14 November 1650, eight days after the death of his father William II, Prince of Orange. He was born Prince of Orange.
• William IV, Prince of Orange — born 1 September 1711, six weeks after the death of his father John William Friso, Prince of Orange. William IV and his only sister are between them ancestors to all currently reigning hereditary European monarchs.
• Queen Caroline Mathilde of Denmark, consort of King Christian VII of Denmark — born 11 July 1751, five months after the death of her father Frederick, Prince of Wales
• Henri, comte de Chambord, French prince and pretender to the throne — born 29 September 1820, seven months after the death of his father Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry
• Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha — born 19 July 1884, four months after the death of his father Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany (a son of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom)
• King Alfonso XIII of Spain — born 17 May 1886, six months after the death of his father King Alfonso XII.
• Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia, consort of King Peter II of Yugoslavia — born 25 March 1921, five months after the death of her father King Alexander of Greece

[edit] Others

• The Greek god Asclepius is said to have been delivered by caesarean section after his mother was killed on Mount Olympus.^[2]
• Muhammad, the last prophet who introduced Islam — born c. 570, six months after his father died
• St Peter Nolasco, Catalan Catholic saint born in 1189, is believed to have been delivered from his mother's womb after she died during childbirth.^[2]
• Pope Clement VII — born 26 May 1478, one month after his father, Giuliano di Piero de' Medici, was assassinated in the Pazzi Conspiracy
• St Joseph of Cupertino, Italian saint — born 17 June 1603
• Sir Isaac Newton, English scientist — born 4 January 1643, three months after his father's death
• Jonathan Swift, English writer — born 30 November 1667, seven months after his father died
• Andrew Jackson, U.S. president — born 15 March 1767, three weeks after the death of his father Andrew Jackson, Sr. in a lumber accident
• George Washington Carver, U.S. botanical researcher and educator — born c. 1864 after his father had been killed
• Breaker Morant, Australian soldier and folk hero — born December 1864
• Frank Anstey, Australian politician - born 18 August 1865, five months after his father's death
• Mabel Mercer, UK-U.S. cabaret singer — born 3 February 1900
• Stanley Kunitz, Lithuanian-U.S. poet — born 29 July 1905, six weeks after his father's death by suicide
• Red Skelton, U.S. actor and comedian — born 18 July 1913, shortly after the death of his father
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist — born 11 December 1918; his father was killed in a hunting accident shortly after his wife became pregnant
• Bill Clinton, U.S. president — born 19 August 1946, three months after his father William Jefferson Blythe, Jr. drowned following a motor accident
• Jett Williams, U.S. singer — born 6 January 1953, five days after the death of her father, legendary country singer Hank Williams
• Tyrone Power, Jr., U.S. actor — born 22 January 1959, three months after the death of his father Tyrone Power
• Antwone Fisher, U.S. author, screenwriter, and film producer — born 3 August 1959
• Rory Kennedy, U.S. documentary film maker — born 12 December 1968, six months after the assassination of her father Robert F. Kennedy

[edit] See also

• Posthumous sperm retrieval

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Posthumous Child (i.e., Born After Father's Death), Adoption.com