Paternity Tales

The "Man" who got pregnant twice

Thomas Beatie, a former Hawaiian beauty queen, was born female but underwent sex change surgery in order to wed his partner Nancy legally. As part of the reassignment procedure, the former Tracy LaGondino took male hormones, inducing a beard and an outwardly masculine appearance. He kept his womb and ovaries intact in the hopes of one day having a child. Wife Nancy is infertile.

So when Beatie announced he was expecting the child, of an anonymous sperm donor, a backlash ensued. Critics claimed that as a natural-born woman Beatie was not in fact a man but was merely masquerading as one. But the state of Oregon legally recognizes him as one, and his marriage to Nancy is official and the couple enjoys all the rights and privileges of typical married pairs. He gave birth to his first kid naturally following a 40-hour labor. And now he's pregnant again; his second baby is due June 12, 2009.

The Twin Brothers who don't know which one is the father, as they were having sex with the same woman

Twin brothers, Raymon and Richard Miller, are the father and uncle to a 3-year-old little girl. The problem is, they don't know which is which. Or who is who. Ramon and Richard have been fighting in court for four years over the paternity of a child; the identical Missouri twins say they were unknowingly having sex with the same woman.

According to the woman's testimony, she had sex with each man on the same day, within hours of each other. When the woman in question, Holly Marie Adams, got pregnant, she named Raymon the father, but he contested and demanded a paternity test, bringing his own brother Richard to court. But the paternity test in this case could not help, as it showed that both brothers have over a 99.9 percent probability of being the daddy— and neither one wants to pay the child support.

The Man who hired his neighbor to get his wife pregnant, but he was sterile too

In Stuttgart, Germany, a man hired his neighbor to get his wife pregnant. It seems that Demetrius Soupolos, 29, and his former beauty queen wife, Traute, wanted a child badly, but Demetrius was told by a doctor that he was sterile. So, Soupolos hired his neighbor, Frank Maus, 34, to impregnate her. Since Maus was already married and the father of two children, plus looked very much like Soupolos to boot, the plan seemed good. Soupolos paid Maus $2,500 for the job and for three evenings a week for the next six months, Maus tried desperately, a total of 72 different times, to impregnate Traute.

However, when Traute failed to get pregnant after six months, Soupolos was not understanding and insisted that Maus have a medical examination, which he did. The doctor's announcement that Maus was also sterile shocked everyone except his wife, who was forced to confess that Maus was not the real father of their two children. Now Soupolos is suing Maus for breach of contract in an effort to get his money back, but Maus refuses to give it up because he said he did not guarantee conception, but only that he would give an honest effort. 

The Man who fathered a child from a 22-year-old sperm sample

In June 2008, Chris Biblis, a former leukaemia patient who had his sperm frozen as a teenager, fathered a baby after doctors successfully thawed his sample a record 22 years later.

Chris was 16 when doctors told him that he needed radiotherapy that would leave him sterile and recommended before going ahead with the life-saving treatment that they put a sample of his sperm into cryogenic storage for future use. Now aged 38, he is celebrating the birth of a healthy baby daughter, Stella, who was conceived after scientists injected a defrosted sperm into an egg from his wife, Melodie, and implanted it in her uterus.

The 22-year lapse between storage in April 1986 and conception in June 2008 is a world record, according to specialists at the US fertility clinic who carried out the procedure.

The President who admitted to be the father of a child conceived while he was still a Catholic bishop

In April 2009, Paraguay's president and former bishop, Fernando Lugo, admitted he is the father of a child conceived while he was still a Roman Catholic bishop. Lugo, 57, renounced his status as bishop in 2006 to run for president but it was not until July 2008 that Pope Benedict XVI gave him unprecedented permission to resign, relieving him of his chastity vows.

The president admitted he had a relationship with Viviana Carrilllo, 26, which began when she was 16 and the paternity of her son Guillermo Armindo, 2, born when he was still the bishop. He finally came out five days after lawyers for Carrillo announced they were filing a paternity suit against him.

The Man who paid $20k on child support over a daughter he never had

In New Mexico, Steve Barreras was forced to pay a total of $20,000 for a daughter that never existed. After getting divorced to Viola Trevino, Viola claimed to be pregnant with Steve's child. This was in spite of the fact that Barreras had a vasectomy in 1998 and claimed that Trevino had tubal ligation in 1978.

Trevino fabricated a daughter named "Stephanie Renee", who she claimed was born in 1999, and obtained a baptismal certificate, birth certificate, Medicare card and Social Security card for the fictitious girl. Mr. Barreras' adult daughter, Eve Barreras, assisted her mother in the scam by filing a fraudulent birth certificate for the phantom daughter with Vital Statistics while she worked at St. Joseph's Northeast Hospital.

In 2002, Trevino was able to persuade a court to order Steve to pay child support for the fabricated daughter, by falsifying DNA evidence. When the judge demanded to see Trevino's daughter in December 2004, she went to a local mall where she persuaded a grandmother and her 2 year old granddaughter that they were "going to go see Santa Claus", but instead went to the courthouse with the 2 year old girl and attempted to pass her off before the judge as her own.

Mr. Barreras, the paternity fraud victim, successfully sued blood laboratory Mobile Blood Services for their role in the DNA hoax. The DNA came from adult daughter Eve Barreras with help of lab employee Pamela Flores. Viola Trevino was sentenced to 16 months in a federal prison in Arizona for claiming the "girl" on tax returns. Trevino owes the IRS over $2200 for the fraud and Barreras $26,000 in child support and lawyer's fees.

Britain's youngest dad... NOT!

Meet Alfie Patten, the British schoolboy who became famous for being "Britain's youngest dad" at the age of 12, then found out he's not the baby's father.

"I take responsibility and will look after baby Maisie like a grown up father. I am the only one who slept with Maisie's mother Chantelle," Alfie told the media whilst holding what he then thought was his baby daughter. But a British tabloid reported the results of a DNA test that showed that he was in fact not the father of Chantelle Stedman's baby girl.

Chantelle had insisted that she was in love with the babyfaced schoolboy and that he had taken her virginity. However, half a dozen boys from Eastbourne in England claimed to have slept with the 15-year-old, who fell pregnant at the age of 14, and prompted Alfie to take a paternity test, with humiliating results.

Anna Nicole's million dollar baby, and the four men who claimed paternity

At least four men filed petitions claiming to be the real father of the Anna Nicole Smith's baby, who stands to inherit many millions of dollars.

These are as follows: Howard K. Stern (Anna's long time lawyer, friend and lately lover), Larry Birkhead (a celebrity photographer who was linked to the glamour girl for almost two years), Zsa Zsa Gabor's former husband (who, out of the blue, decided to come clean about his 'amorous' relationship to Anna) and one of her bodyguards. And another man with whom Anna was linked in the past and who stands equal chances of having fathered Danni: a man who is now spending the last months of his sentence in prison - Mark 'Hollywood' Hatten. Mark stated that he could be the father of Anna's child, since she once asked him to make a 'sperm donation' to the 'Anna Nicole Smith sperm bank', a thing to which he immediately complied since there wasn't anything he wouldn't have done for her. As a consequence of this battle, even Anna Nicole's burial had to be put on hold.

Finally, after all the noise and DNA tests, ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead was proven the father of the baby girl, although his rival, Howard K. Stern, had been caring for 7-month-old Dannielynn since the former Playboy Playmate's sudden death, and his name is on her birth certificate.

The Twins kids who came up from different parents after test tube mix-up

Wilma and Willem Stuart are a Dutch couple who had been, unsuccessfully, trying to conceive for years, before they decided to try IVF. They soon learned they would be parents of twins.

But when the two boys were born, Koen had blue eyes, dark hair and pink skin, Tuen had dark eyes dark hair and brown skin. A DNA test revealed that Koen was the Stuarts child but Tuen was not Willem's. The report of the investigation has not been made public, but speculation is that a piece of lab equipment called a pipette, like a large eyedropper, had been used twice, causing another man's sperm to be mixed with Willem's.

The hospital called it a "deeply regrettable mistake". The Stuarts remembered there was a black couple in the waiting room the same day during the IVF process. The hospital located the man and confirmed he was Tuen's biological father. Although he was under no obligation to meet his son he never knew he had, he did when Koen was 18 months old. The biological father only looked at him from a distance and didn't try to claim him and was comfortable that the Stuarts loved the child, and let them continue raising him.

The Man who has to pay child support, but he's not the father

Sixteen months after his divorce, Richard Parker, a Florida resident, discovered the child he was paying support for was not his via DNA testing. Florida justices ruled 7-0 against him, stating that Parker must continue to pay $1,200 a month in child support because he had missed the one-year post divorce deadline for filing his lawsuit. His court-ordered payments would total more than $200,000 over 15 years to support a child she had with another man.