A woman has launched a £60,000 legal battle to win the right to get pregnant using her dead fiance's sperm.
Ellie Home was devastated four months ago when she lost her partner Myles to pneumonia after a lengthy battle with leukemia.
However the couple, who had been together for three years, had already started having IVF treatment to try to have a baby.
The 22-year-old partner now wants to continue that treatment so that she can have the child she and Myles had dreamed of.
Speaking at her home in Milton Keynes, Bucks., Ellie said: "Before Myles started his treatment, he was asked if we wanted some of his semen to be frozen and stored in case he ever wanted to start a family.
"He said yes, of course. Having children together was something we had always planned and dreamed of. So there are nine vials in storage with the NHS, waiting to be used.
"I had started the initial consultations with an IVF clinic and the plan was for me to get pregnant as soon as possible."
Tragically, Myles' health declined rapidly last year after he suffered a series of infections.
However, his death in September was still sudden and unexpected according to Ellie, who has taken his last name, despite the pandemic preventing their marriage.
Unfortunately, during the build-up to Myles' death, neither the doctors nor any hospital officials mentioned his frozen sperm.
Ellie explained: "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 had 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.
"We talked about how the child would be into Star Wars and geeky things, just like their dad....death was something that was never anticipated."
As Myles did not give explicit consent, Ellie has no legal right to use the frozen sperm for IVF treatment, meaning she will have to fight an uphill legal battle that will cost her up to £60,000.
Ellie has the support of Myles' family and is able to support herself and the child.
Even so, lawyers have given Ellie only a 50/50 chance of winning her case and she has already spent all her funds in her fight. Now she has turned to the public and has set up a GoFundMe page in order to try and raise the funds for her court battle.
She said: "I am now facing a very long and costly court case to win legality over Myles' stored semen, something that should rightly be 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 but I am on the brink of losing the chance to ever even have our children.
"We all feel it would be a little bit of Myles that we still have. The child would be loved and cherished.
"I am desperately in need of raising the funds now, at this point. I have so far used all of our savings that Myles had left to me, the money we had aside to build our future with, to use for our children.
"Thank you to everyone who has been sharing and donating. You will never know how much it means to us.
"These past few days I have been completely and solely occupied with gathering up every single piece of evidence to show how much me and Myles wanted children, and how we were already involved in the early stages of IVF."
