Because no state case law exists directly on the topic, Mr. Lieberman is hoping to settle the issue out of court. But there is some precedent. In a few rare circumstances, courts have acknowledged the limits of a woman’s biological clock and awarded her custody of fertilized embryos created during a past romantic relationship. (Earlier this summer an Illinois appellate court held that a woman could keep custody of the embryos she and her ex-boyfriend made, before she lost her fertility to cancer treatment.) But awarding money to freeze future unfertilized eggs is different, because the genetic material belongs solely to the woman.

And yet it makes sense. Legal experts like Kevin Noble Maillard of Syracuse University speculate that a woman’s missed opportunities to have a baby during a marriage could be viewed as a form of “sacrifice” for which she should be compensated (in much the same way that a woman who put her husband through law school could expect to be compensated if he divorced her just before he reaped the financial rewards of the degree). And it helps rectify one of life’s greatest biological injustices: that men but not women can typically start a family well into middle age and beyond.

To be sure, the question of whether to include the cost of egg freezing as part of a divorce settlement is complex. What if he wanted to have kids earlier in the marriage, but she delayed it because of her career? Does it matter if they tried for several years or if he had the fertility problem?