A grieving woman has lost her bid to use her dead fiance's frozen sperm for IVF - because he didn't give permission before his sudden death.
Ellie Horne, 22, fears she will lose the chance forever to have partner Myles' children - a shared dream of the couple.
Myles sadly died from pneumonia last September after a lengthy battle with leukaemia.
Ellie said: "I am now facing a very long and costly court case to win legality over Myles' stored semen, something that should be rightly mine.
"Not only have I lost the love of my life; the man who I built a life with, planned to marry and carry his children, I am at the brink of losing the chance to ever even have our children."
Ellie, who has taken Myles' surname despite not being married, is preparing for a £60,000 high court battle to win the right to use his sperm.
The couple had been together for three years and Myles froze his sperm after doctors warned cancer treatment could render him infertile.
They had started IVF treatment but Ellie, from Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, said it was pushed back due to the Covid pandemic.
Myles' health declined rapidly last year after a series of infections - but Ellie said his death last September was unexpected.
Now, Ellie claims that experts never told the couple that Myles needed to sign a consent form for her to use his sperm in case he died.
Ellie said: "As the law stands, he needed to sign a consent form for me to use his sperm after he passed away. Nobody told us this.
"We had no idea. Had we known, he would most definitely have signed.
"We'd talked so much about the baby we wanted to have. If it was a boy we planned to call him Mylo, after Myles. If it's a girl we wanted to call her Nora, after my nan."
Ellie has ploughed her savings into the court battle and is fundraising £50,000 to help with legal costs.
The GoFundMe page can be found here: Losing my Fiancé & Fighting Rights to Start Family, organised by Ellie Horne
