Manhatten: A US judge has ruled a woman’s former lover only has to pay half of his child support — because one of his twins has a different father, The Huffington Post reported. Passaic County Judge Sohail Mohammad read the paternity results in the case, in which an unidentified woman’s former lover was told he would only need to pay $28 per week in child support because only one of the twins was his.
In a case that would make anyone’s jaw drop, the unlikely situation comes by way of a process called heteropaternal superfecundation, in which a woman releases two eggs in the same menstrual cycle and two separate men fertilise one egg each.
The case began in October 2014, when social services filed a child support request on the mother’s behalf, naming the man as father of both girls. A DNA test was later ordered showing the results, prompting the mother to admit to the court she had been intimate with another man in the same week one child was conceived. Judge Mohammad’s ruling set a precedent as no known case like this has ever been seen before. According to a study, the situation occurs in one out of every 13,000 paternity cases involving twins.
