In a bizarre incident, a man – who lives in Barnsley town of South Yorkshire, England – mixed his own sperm with that of his father to get his partner pregnant.
After the Barnsley Council discovered the case, they decided to take legal action against the man and asked him to undergo a paternity test. However, a High Court judge ruled that the man cannot be forced to take a paternity test.
The strange step was taken by the man and his then-partner after they faced fertility issues and finally gave birth to a son.
In the court ruling, the judge said that the council had “no stake” in the result of any test. The court was also informed that the man, his father and his partner had “always intended” to keep the arrangement around the conception of the child a secret.
In the court hearing held in January, it was said that the man shared a father-and-son relationship with the five-year-old child. The issue was discovered by Barnsley Council in separate proceedings and had appealed to the High Court in Sheffield to give the order for DNA tests.
In his ruling, Justice Poole dismissed the council’s request and said that they had no parental responsibility or a “personal interest” in the biological parentage of the boy.
“It may wish to know who is D’s biological father, but it has no stake in the outcome of its application. A wish to uphold the public interest in maintaining accurate records of births does not confer a personal interest in the determination of such an application,” he said.
Court calls the child ‘unique’
The judge said that the family had “created a welfare minefield”. “I cannot believe that JK (the mother), PQ (the man) and RS (his father) properly thought through the ramifications of their scheme for JK to become pregnant, otherwise it is unlikely that they would have embarked upon it,” he said.
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He further stated that the boy “is a unique child who would not exist but for the unusual arrangements made for his conception, but those arrangements have also created the potential for him to suffer emotional harm were he to learn of them”.
“It must be acknowledged that the circumstances of D’s (child) conception cannot now be undone. Without testing, his biological paternity remains uncertain but there is a strong chance, to say the least, that the person he thinks is his grandfather is his biological father, and that the person he thinks is his father is his biological half-brother,” he said.
(With inputs from agencies)
