On behalf of Stange Law Firm, PC posted in Child Custody on Thursday, January 16, 2014.
On our fathers’ rights blog, we have often written about cases where a father has to undergo tests and go to court in order to establish paternity of a child. The results can have wide-reaching impacts on child custody and family relationships. While it is not terribly uncommon for a man to establish that he is the father of the child some time after the child’s birth, it is almost unfathomable that a family could find out after two decades that their daughter had been fathered by a lab employee who had been entrusted to help parents conceive a child.
The child is now a 21-year-old woman. Her family was interested in genealogy and had some genetic tests done. They were alarmed when the tests showed no relation between the woman and her father. It turns out that the family went through a fertility clinic to conceive their daughter. Due to the test results, it occurred to them that there had somehow been a mixup at the lab.
The situation turned out to be more sinister, however. Further testing revealed that the woman’s true father was a former employee of the fertility clinic. The man, who is now deceased, had served two years in prison on kidnapping charges prior to his employment at the clinic.
The clinic closed in 1998 and its records were apparently discarded years ago, so many of the pieces to the puzzle are now lost. In any case, the family involved may want to consider legal action against the clinic’s former owners or the estate of the employee in question.
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune, “Report: Utah kidnapper is woman’s father due to semen switch,” Matthew Piper, Jan. 9, 2014
