Robert N. Wilentz; Judge in ‘Baby M’ Case

Robert N. Wilentz, 69, state court judge who wrote the landmark “Baby M” opinion barring surrogate parenting agreements. In the 1988 case, William and Elizabeth Stern of Tenafly, N.J., paid Mary Beth Whitehead $10,000 to bear a child for them. The birth mother wanted to keep the child. Wilentz awarded custody of the child to the Sterns, but banned such surrogate parenting contracts as “illegal, perhaps criminal, and potentially degrading to women.” In another case, he sanctioned “battered women’s syndrome” as a defense for a woman charged with murder. He earned his law degree at Columbia and practiced with his father’s law firm. Wilentz served two terms in the state Legislature. He was appointed chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1979 and retired this month. On Tuesday in New York City of cancer.