California residents may be interested to learn about a very rare child support case involving twins. After a woman in New Jersey pursued child support from the man she thought was her twins’ father, she discovered that the man was the father of only one of her babies. As a result of the DNA testing, a judge ruled that the man would only have to pay child support for one twin.
Although it is a very rare occurrence, it is possible for twins to have two different fathers. The phenomenon is called heteropaternal superfecundation and is an issue in one out of every 13,000 paternity cases involving twins. A laboratory director who testified in the New Jersey case said that he sees evidence of the phenomenon at his lab about six times a year. A woman can conceive twins with two different fathers if she produces two eggs and has sex with two different men during the same fertility cycle.
The mother in the New Jersey case reportedly testified in court that she remembered having sex with two different men around the time when her twins were conceived. However, she only petitioned one of the fathers for child support. After the results of the DNA test revealed that the twins had different fathers, the claim for child support for one of the children was dismissed.
Cases like this are very rare, but there are many child support cases that involve questions about paternity. A man who is being asked to pay child support for a child that he does not believe he fathered may want to have representation from an attorney.