patrick.net
An Antidote to Corporate Media
1,198,549 comments by 14,131 users - HeadSet, Patrick online now
Man wins 39k over IVF baby deceit -- Lost and Confused, this is for you!
invite response
2015 Mar 22, 11:43am 4,262 views 9 comments
Comments 1 - 9 of 9 Search these comments
turtledove
2015 Mar 22, 1:12pm
So the tide is turning!!! Good and in Britain no less!
I'm not too surprised. They were early adopters of the father's rights campaigns. They even had one guy who would dress up as a super hero... He got a lot of press in the 90s.
zzyzzx
2015 Mar 23, 9:55am
A woman who conned her former husband into believing he was the father of her IVF baby has been ordered to pay £39,000 in damages at the High Court.
The man looked after the child when the woman was working and paid more than £80,000 in maintenance, his lawyer told the court.
Seems to me that the settlement should have been much higher than £39,000
turtledove
2015 Mar 23, 10:01am
Seems to me that the settlement should have been much higher than £39,000
In a perfect world, it would be. However, this is a huge step in the right direction. It's never happened before. The best-interest-of-the-child standard doesn't allow it. But this is the first step in the direction of a court recognizing that duping someone into paying child support isn't okay... even if the kid is better off having access to those ill-gotten funds.
Equal treatment isn't going to happen overnight, and, frankly, it might never be truly equal treatment... But it's about time that a judge considered the damage to the father in situations like this.
Mr Brudenell said the couple had drawn up an agreement prior to the IVF treatment under which the man said he would not have the "normal" financial responsibility for any child and it seemed the agreement had "upset" the woman.
******
The above sentence confuses me... what is "normal" financial responsibility. Is he considering his IVF baby to be abnormal... so he pays less child support on it than a "natural" child?
turtledove
2015 Mar 23, 10:58am
Mr Brudenell said the couple had drawn up an agreement prior to the IVF treatment under which the man said he would not have the "normal" financial responsibility for any child and it seemed the agreement had "upset" the woman.
******
The above sentence confuses me... what is "normal" financial responsibility. Is he considering his IVF baby to be abnormal... so he pays less child support on it than a "natural" child?
It's probably irrelevant as far as the case is concerned. Parents aren't allowed to pre-negotiate support matters in prenups. That's been tried and shot down many times.
justme
2015 Mar 23, 1:13pm
The following is the key sentence of the whole story:
"A few months later the woman returned to the clinic with a former boyfriend."
Hello? A married woman can go to an IVF clinic in Spain, first with her husband, not get pregnant, then later with another man, and get pregnant, and the clinic will not notify the husband about the paternity of the child? This is pure fraud of the most egregious sort. Let me guess, she probably took a nice little "morning-after" pill after the first trip, just to make sure that the husband would not be the father. And for the 2nd trip, the husband naturally assumed they were going to use his frozen sperm from the first trip.
There is NO limit to the amount and degree of deception a woman will go through to avoid carrying the biological offspring baby of the man that provides for her. All the endless harping about unfaithful husbands is just a smokescreen used to stay on the offensive and to keep men down and demonized.
justme
2015 Mar 23, 1:37pm
In advance of changing "in the best interest of the child" laws, perhaps it's time to bring back a mandatory dowry in the form of a bond purchased by the bride to indemnify the groom against fraudulent pregnancy,
Not only that, but paternity law should be written explicitly to protect those defrauded, and not anyone else.
( guess I would also call it fraudulent paternity and not fraudulent pregnancy)
WOW! Maybe the pendulum is starting to swing the other way....
=============================================================
A woman who conned her former husband into believing he was the father of her IVF baby has been ordered to pay £39,000 in damages at the High Court.
The London businesswoman carried out "six years of deception" on her ex-partner, a judge was told. Neither can be identified for legal reasons,
The man said the boy, now nine, was five when she told him the truth.
He had claimed the child was created without his knowledge with the use of sperm from a former boyfriend.
He was said to have suffered considerable "distress and humiliation" when he found out.
'Bombshell news'
Judge Deborah Taylor made the ruling following a hearing of the evidence at Central London County Court at which the couple were referred to as X and Y.
She ordered the woman to pay the damages, plus interest.
The couple married in 2002 and two years later they travelled to a clinic in Spain for IVF treatment, where the man gave a sample of his sperm.
A few months later the woman returned to the clinic with a former boyfriend.
Barrister Thomas Brudenell, who represented the man, said during the later visit the woman was impregnated with her former boyfriend's sperm.
The boy was born in late 2005 and when he was around six months old the couple separated.
The man looked after the child when the woman was working and paid more than £80,000 in maintenance, his lawyer told the court.
When a dispute arose over the amount of contact he was having with the child in 2011, the woman revealed he was not the "biological father" and this was confirmed when he took a DNA test.
'Distress and humiliation'
Mr Brudenell said the couple had drawn up an agreement prior to the IVF treatment under which the man said he would not have the "normal" financial responsibility for any child and it seemed the agreement had "upset" the woman.
The woman had asked whether any "normal, loving, caring, husband" would have "forced his wife" to sign such an agreement.
"He didn't want to go back [to the Spanish clinic]," she said. "The only reason I took [my ex-boyfriend] was because my ex-husband gave me that document to sign.
She told the court there was "no merit" in the damages claim, saying she had always believed her former husband was aware he was "not necessarily" the boy's father.
She said there had been no deceit, no fraud and no misrepresentation.
Mr Brudenell told the court that the man wanted damages for "distress and humiliation", damages to cover the amount he had paid in maintenance, and compensation for loss of earnings.
Speaking anonymously to BBC Radio 4's PM programme the man revealed he had been refused the right to continue seeing the child after a separate court case.
"Now I have to wait until he is 18 and by then who knows," he said.
"I don't regret any of the time I spent with my child at all. I don't regret that ever, but when someone actually comes along years later and spoils everything that way, you're revisiting all those experiences thinking, that wasn't right was it, and not for him either."
Cara Nuttall, a lawyer who specialises in family cases said the judge had sent a "clear message to parents that concealing the truth from each other is unacceptable".
"What parents must remember however is that whilst financial damages are one thing, the emotional and psychological impact such deceit can have can have far more devastating consequences."
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31981961