An Interview with Eve Wiley: Raising Awareness on Fertility Fraud
This month at Dexit, we had the privilege of interviewing Eve Wiley for our blog. You may recognize her from the recent Netflix documentary "The Man with 1000 Kids." Eve is a dedicated advocate for victims of fertility fraud, working tirelessly to change laws in the United States to create civil and criminal consequences for perpetrators, and to offer better protection for victims.
Eve’s story is a personal one. Her mother, seeking to conceive, used what she believed to be an anonymous sperm donor a as Donor 106. When Eve turned 18, she formed a relationship with this donor, thinking he was her biological father. However, after taking a commercial DNA test years later, she discovered the DNA did not match. Through extensive investigation, Eve learned that her biological father was actually the fertility clinic doctor who had treated her mother, a fact unbeknownst to her mother. Through tragedy is born triumph, an Eve's mission is one not to be deterred.
At Dexit, we specialize in online accounts as it relates to estate planning and incorporate bio-data and health accounts into our services. This is because DNA, health records, and medical histories are becoming a new class of assets that can be both monetized and weaponized. The legal framework has not kept pace with advancements in biomedicine, IVF, and fertility treatments, impacting the estate planning industry significantly. Dexit’s focus on online accounts relies on a 360 discovery for comprehensive Estate Plans and helps to avoid potential lawsuits within families when it comes to Estate Administration.
One example shared during our interview with Eve involved a grandfather in Kentucky whose will stipulated that his estate would go to his biological heirs. When it was discovered that his son had committed fertility fraud, multiple offspring claimed the estate, ultimately resulting in an out-of-court settlement. Another example comes from Mississippi where children conceived posthumously from frozen embryos often lack rights to benefits like social security, in the case of Elyse McDill, the state didn’t recognize Elyse as the legal child of McDill because she was conceived via IVF shortly after McDill’s death. Currently, 27 states are considering legislation to address inheritance rights for these posthumously conceived children.
It’s thanks to strong, outspoken people like Eve Wiley, that this narrative is reaching the broader audience. In the United States, 12.4% of the population struggles with infertility, and that isn’t even including other families within the LGBT communities, or singles mothers by choice who use IVF treatments. The world is becoming increasingly complex, and this complexity extends to family structures as well. With advancements in biomedicine, inheritance issues are not only about wealth transfer but also how genetic data can impact the lives of future generations.
These commercial DNA companies have valuable data, not in just your family tree. Blackstone acquired ancestry.com for $4.7Billion, this shift will transform building family trees into building a network of DNA tracers that will affect “our long-term vision of personalized preventive health," Ancestry CEO Margo Georgiadis said in the press release announcing the sale. What would they do with this data? Likelihood is it may be sold to insurance companies, who will determine your insurance rates based on the health records of people before you. It’s not like this isn’t done today when they ask if you are a tobacco user, but this takes it to a whole new level.
In conclusion, the intersection of biomedicine and estate planning is growing more relevant. Understanding and addressing these issues are crucial for protecting individual rights and navigating the complexities of modern family structures and raising the standards in an unregulated industry. We thank Eve for her amazing and dynamic energy, bringing this to the political stage and having a profound world impact. Thank you!
