Case of Triplets with Different Fathers Finally Closed
According to a May 17 article in The Times (UK) online, a rare paternity case involving a set of triplets fathered by two different men has finally been settled after a 10-year legal fight.
After the birth of his mistress’s triplets in 1997, the man—who allegedly had a brief affair with the triplets’ mother—began to doubt that he was the father of all three babies because he thought one child looked markedly different from the other two. When the mother took the man to court to pursue maintenance (a form of financial compensation in the UK that resembles the U.S. child support system), he voiced his paternity doubts and asked for a DNA paternity test.
According to court records, the first paternity test was completed in 1998 on just one child. Because the DNA test showed this man was the biological child of that child, the results were “extrapolated,” as one legal official noted, and it was concluded that the man must have then fathered all the children in question. This conclusion was drawn because it was believed nearly impossible that more than one man could father one set of multiples. However, the man persisted, and two more paternity tests were eventually carried out in 2000 and 2007—testing all children involved— which proved that he only fathered one of the three children. While details of the case are still being sorted out, the man has said he is relieved that this 10-year process of proving his initial suspicions is over.
While extremely rare, it is possible for fraternal twins to have different biological fathers. This can occur if a mother ovulates twice in the same month, and each egg is fertilized by a different man’s sperm within that time frame. Identical twins, however, cannot be fathered by two different men because identical twins occur when one fertilized egg splits into two—the embryo contains DNA from only one sperm and one egg that split after fertilization and then multiply. Therefore, identical twins have the exact same DNA, while fraternal twins have different DNA. A twin zygosity DNA test can determine if twins are identical or fraternal by comparing their DNA.
According recent studies, scientists estimate that worldwide, one in 12 fraternal twin set are bi-paternal, and science has named this type of twinning “hetero-paternal superfecundation.”
For more information on DNA paternity tests for twins who may have different fathers, please visit DDC’s new Paternity Testing for Twins resource.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 3:39 pm and is filed under DNA Paternity Testing.
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