Two twins have two different fathers, judge rules in rare child support case

File photo of babies Source: Shutterstock/Dirk Ott

A PATERNITY CASE involving a set of twins has had a surprise ending worthy of a daytime TV talk show: The girls have different dads.

A judge in New Jersey ruled this week that a man from whom the twins’ mother sought child support only has to pay for one of the children.

A DNA test showed that he was almost certainly the father of one twin but wasn’t the father of the other.

It’s rare for a woman to give birth to twins with different fathers, but not unheard of.

The phenomenon – known as “heteropaternal superfecundation” – happens in about one out of every 13,000 cases, according to the US National Library of Medicine.

It can occur when a woman has sex with two men in the same menstrual cycle and two of her eggs are fertilized separately by each man.

In this case, the woman in question told the court she had had sex with both men in the span of about a week.

She had been seeking child support payments from a man she thought was the father of her daughters, who were born in January 2013.

In the end, Judge Sohail Mohammed ruled that he owes $28 per week.

Contains reporting by the Associated Press.

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