In the kind of case Maury would love to sink his teeth into (you are not the father!), a New Jersey judge’s unprecedented child support ruling brought to light a shocking medical oddity. A mother of twins applying for public assistance claimed that one man was the father of her two girls. DNA tests proved otherwise.
Judge Sohail Mohammed of Passaic County, New Jersey, ruled that the alleged father of both twins only had to pay child support for one. According to the courts, the twin girls, born January 2013, were conceived in an anomaly — through separate sexual encounters within a week of each other. The man thought to be the father (in a relationship with the twins’ mother at the time) was only the father of one twin. The second child was fathered through a previously undisclosed sexual encounter within the same week.
According to The New Jersey Law Journal, this unparalleled ruling sets a precedent. The original father in the case, noted as A.S. in court documentation, was only legally bound to pay child support for one twin, his biological child proven through a DNA test. A.S. will pay child support for his toddler daughter at $28 per week.
Judge Mohammed confirmed just two other similar court cases recorded in the U.S. While it is exceedingly rare, so rare even I have never heard of this before, it is possible for a mother to birth twin babies from two different fathers. Dr. Wurzinger, lab director of the Identity Testing Division at Laboratory Corporation of America and witness in the case, previously published a study confirming that a mere one in 13,000 paternity cases involved twins with two fathers.
In order for this medical feat to be achieved, a woman must release two eggs within the same cycle that are fertilized by two different men. Hence, what this woman thought to be a secret sexual encounter within the same week of her first sexual encounter led to the conception of twin number two.
Take a moment to wrap your mind around this. For the mother, I can’t imagine what a shock this must be. Now she finds herself in a position where she has to track down another father for child support and somehow explain to her twin daughters that they are half-sisters. Thanks to the wonders of the reproductive system, this single mom’s life just got much more complicated.
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