By Charles Toutant, From New Jersey Law Journal

Shedding light on a little-known aspect of “the birds and the bees,” a New Jersey family court judge found that a man identified as the father of twin girls had in fact fathered only one of them.

The ruling is one of first impression in New Jersey and is among only a handful of similar reported cases nationwide, according to the opinion.

Judge Sohail Mohammed in Passaic County Superior Court ruled the man, identified in court documents as A.S., must pay child support only for the twin who was determined through a DNA test to be his offspring, but not for the other. Mohammed ruled the DNA paternity test used in the case, conducted by Laboratory Corp. of America, accurately and reliably established the father’s paternity for only one of the twins.

The twins’ mother, identified as T.M., was in a relationship with A.S., and she initially identified him to the Passaic County Board of Social Services as the father of the twins when she applied for benefits, according to Mohammed. The board filed an application seeking to establish paternity of A.S. and to make him pay child support. But the mother testified in the case that she had sexual intercourse with A.S. and with another, unidentified man within the span of a week.

Mohammed dismissed with prejudice the application to find that A.S. had fathered the other child.

The judge found that the general concept of using DNA testing to determine paternity is widely accepted in the scientific community and that the specific methods used in the present case are accurate and reliable. Mohammed said that DNA paternity tests were ordinarily accepted as reliable without expert testimony, but the unusual circumstances of this case warranted additional scrutiny. He found the DNA test results reliable after hearing expert testimony from Karl-Hans Wurzinger, laboratory director of the Identity Testing Division at Laboratory Corp. of America.

Before accepting the paternity results, the judge considered several factors, including the methods employed and conditions under which the DNA specimen was obtained, transported, stored and handled, as well as the training, skill and judgment of DNA handlers and any evidence of tampering or user bias.

Wurzinger testified that the twins born to T.M. were born from two eggs that were fertilized from different fathers during the same menstrual cycle. An article Wurzinger published in 1997 said approximately one in every 13,000 reported paternity cases involved twins with separate fathers, according to Mohammed’s ruling.

Today, although there is no central registry of births related to the phenomenon, the incidence of twins with separate fathers is believed to be on the increase, due to assisted reproductive technologies, medical stimulation of ovulation, promiscuity and other factors, Mohammed said.

The complaint was brought by the Passaic County Board of Social Services as assignee of T.M. Liana Allen, an attorney who represented the board in the case, was out of her office and could not be reached. Frank Sciro Jr., chief counsel for the board, did not return a call seeking comment.

The ruling reinforces the well-settled law that the right to child support belongs to the child and that the obligation to pay support belongs to the parent, said Jeralyn Lawrence, chair of the family law section of the New Jersey State Bar Association. The judges correctly found that the father is obligated to pay child support for his own child, but not for the other twin, Lawrence said.

Lawrence said the case illustrates the need for practitioners to understand the little-known phenomenon of twins with separate fathers.

The ruling is “novel in that I don’t think this issue was on anyone’s radar to even question a client about,” Lawrence said.

Photo: Denis Kot/iStockphoto.com.

For more on this story go to: http://www.njlawjournal.com/id=1202725767391/Man-Fathered-Only-One-Twin-Judge-Says#ixzz3ZYlCoBPQ