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A Texas publicist who says she was Rielle Hunter's confidant when her secret affair began with John Edwards is convinced the ex-senator fathered her friend's baby. "She would not have a child with someone that she didn't love - and she loves him," said Pigeon O'Brien, who says she was pals with Hunter for 20 years until they lost touch a year ago. As "who's the daddy" speculation persisted, the National Enquirer reported last night that Edwards lied when he told the nation - and his sick wife - that he ended the "short" affair in 2006. Edwards renewed the...

Tulsa athlete Micheal Thomas swears he never met Lawton drug user Tiffany Dickson. Paternity Mistake DHS falsely accused Micheal Thomas of being the father of a baby whose mother... Dickson says she never met him. That didn't stop the Oklahoma Department of Human Services from getting Thomas declared the father of Dickson's baby daughter and badgering him until he dropped out of college, forfeiting a football scholarship. It also didn't stop DHS from taking a portion of his biweekly paychecks and seizing his $290 state and federal tax refunds. "This is unbelievable. This is crazy,” said Thomas, 21, a former...

Saturday, Hunter's lawyer, Robert Gordon, issued a statement saying, “Rielle will not participate in DNA testing or any other invasion of her or her daughter's privacy now or in the future." JohnedwardssonSo I guess Edwards is pretty much off the hook on that offer to take a paternity test. Is that why he so freely offered to take one? But Edwards better not make her angry... oh, maybe by not giving her what she wants, forgetting her birthday, not paying enough attention to her, or by not marrying her in a few years... She could so change her mind. Talk...

The family of John Edwards' former mistress, Rielle Hunter, is challenging the former senator to take a DNA paternity test after his claim that he did not father Hunter's six-month old child. In the first reaction from Hunter's family, her younger sister Melissa told ABC News that Edwards should immediately follow through on his pledge to take a paternity test. "I would challenge him to do so," the sister said. "Somebody must stand up and defend my sister," she said. "I wish that those involved would refrain from bad-mouthing my sister." In his interview with ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff...

Rielle Hunter, the former presidential campaign aide who had an affair with John Edwards, said yesterday that she will not pursue DNA testing to establish the paternity of her 5-month-old daughter, despite the former senator's offer to participate in such a test. In a statement provided to The Washington Post, Hunter said through her attorney that she will not be party to such a test "now or in the future." The attorney, Robert Gordon, called Hunter a "private" person who is "not running for public office" and would not comment further. "She wishes to maintain her privacy and her daughter's...

Rielle Hunter, the former presidential campaign aide who had an affair with John Edwards, said yesterday that she will not pursue DNA testing to establish the paternity of her 5-month-old daughter, despite the former senator's offer to participate in such a test. In a statement provided to The Washington Post, Hunter said through her attorney that she would not take a genetic test "now or in the future." The attorney, Robert Gordon, called Hunter a "private" person who is "not running for public office" and would not comment further on the media frenzy engulfing her.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The ex-mistress of former presidential candidate John Edwards says she will not participate in DNA testing to establish the paternity of her daughter. Rielle Hunter's lawyer, Robert Gordon, says his client is a private individual who wishes to maintain the privacy of herself and her daughter. In a statement, Gordon says that Hunter is ruling out any kind of testing that could establish who the daughter's father is.

Dallas lawyer Fred Baron told The Dallas Morning News today that he made regular payments to the woman that former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards has confessed to having an affair with. Mr. Baron, who was chairman of Mr. Edwards’ presidential campaign finance committee, said he paid money to Rielle Hunter to move from North Carolina to another location. He said she and another campaign aide, Andrew Young, who claimed paternity of Ms. Hunter’s child, were being dogged by tabloid reporters who believed she had an affair with Mr. Edwards and fathered his child. Mr. Baron would not say how...

"One morning in 2006 Kimberly, then a 38-year-old New York therapist, was getting her three children ready for their day at preschool. She was cooking breakfast for her two daughters and one son when her husband, Ken, called out from another part of the house, telling her there was a morning show segment on that she should watch. Kimberly (who did not want her last name used) turned on the television in the kitchen. As the camera panned across a group of youngsters and infants visiting the show's studio with their mothers, she moved closer to the screen -- and...

Gene Disorder Complicates Sect Custody FightApril 27, 2008 · Lawyers for the mothers of 462 children taken from a polygamist ranch in West Texas will ask a state appeals court for relief, but the process is slowed by problems in determining the children's parentage. Texas family law officials continue to investigate allegations of physical and sexual abuse. Wade Goodwyn and Liane Hansen discuss the legal proceedings.Meanwhile, many of the children in the FLDS group suffer from fumarase deficiency, a genetic disease that causes acute retardation and physical deformation. The disease was spread through decades of inbreeding, according to John...

An over-the-counter DNA paternity test now offers unknowing families peace of mind - in every state but New York. Identigene, a Salt Lake City-based genetics company, released an at-home paternity test this month, giving mothers and their offspring a speedy answer to a difficult question. Unsure mothers swab the inside of their child's mouth - and the mouth of the suspected father - then send the swabs to Salt Lake City for testing. Three to five days later, customers can log on to a secure Web site to view the results. Identigene discards the DNA after six months, but keeps...

After two decades, Sean Reid of Surrey, British Columbia, discovered that he had a son. Fred Turley of Des Plaines, Ill., learned he didn’t have a daughter. And Wendy Lieb of Lewis Center, Ohio, made certain she wasn’t going to be a grandmother quite yet. In all three situations, crucial genetic information altered the lives of the people involved. And in each case, it came not from a doctor or other medical source, but from a $29.99 kit on a drugstore shelf. Reid, Turley and Lieb are among more than 800 customers who responded to the first wave of marketing...

February 24, 2008 Mystery over Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, son of French top gun Albert Preziosi Jon Swain Seldom have the French been so glad to see the back of an official guest as they were last year when Colonel Muammar Gadaffi left Paris after a chaotic five-day visit when he pitched his bedouin tent a stone’s throw from the Elys饠Palace. Last week the Libyan leader had the last laugh when the French were reminded of the possibility that their recent guest is the son of a French war hero. According to a legend circulating in Vezzani, Corsica, Gadaffi’s father was...

A Houston businessman now living in Canada claims he's President John F. Kennedy's love child — and he wants the Kennedy clan to help him prove it. Jack Worthington, 46, who bears a striking resemblance to the assassinated leader, has appealed to the Kennedys to provide DNA from the former president or from males directly related to JFK's father, Joe Kennedy. A spokeswoman for the Kennedys didn't return calls for comment. Worthington didn't say why he came forward now but insists he isn't out for financial gain. He told a Canadian television station, "I would sign an agreement with the...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A woman in Germany who became pregnant after an online sex auction has won a court battle to force the Web site that hosted the sale to reveal the names of the winners, so she can find out who's the father. Six different men won Internet auctions to have sex with the woman in April and May last year. They were only known to her by their online names, a spokesman for a court in the southwestern city of Stuttgart said Wednesday. "The woman wanted to discover which one of the men had made her pregnant," the...

"All’s fair in love, war, and paternity cases. When child support is sought, there is scarcely any deceit that courts won’t push aside under the “best interests of the child” test."Courts have ruled that boys who were statutorily raped by older women must pay child support. Courts have ruled that when a woman has taken the semen from a condom a man used for sex with a different woman and has inserted it in herself, the man must still pay child support. Courts have ruled that when a woman has concealed her pregnancy (denying the man the right to be...

She was suffocated in robbery, police say Anne Gordon spent her last moments on the floor of her townhouse, praying to God for the man who was wrapping her face in duct tape during a robbery, according to a criminal complaint. The man, who officials say was 30-year-old Eric Henry, considered Gordon to be his grandmother. Henry was charged Tuesday with Gordon's death, the Milwaukee County district attorney's office said. Family members said Henry, of Brown Deer, is the stepson of Gordon's son Paul. Gordon, a 75-year-old pastor, died from asphyxiation because of the duct tape placed over her airways,...

In an exclusive, stunning revelation, the actual paternity of Luke Skywalker has finally been discovered. Contrary to the claims and dramatizations of the life of the legendary hero, the link to Anakin Skywalker is now discovered to have been an elaborate cover-up to hide the truth, which has now, due to genetic testing, been brought to light. The son The true father

During her divorce proceedings, Bonnie repeatedly claimed that Doug Richardson was the father of her child, but the child told Doug that Bonnie stated that Abraham Flores was his real father. The court refused Doug's request for a continuance to obtain counsel to assist in contesting paternity. 1 The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed. 2 A paternity test excluded Doug as a possible father of the child. 3 Bonnie resumed living with Abraham, but Doug was forced to pay child support into the household of the child's real father. Later, Bonnie and Abraham broke up with a formal change of...

SOMETIMES when the earth shudders it doesn’t make a sound. That’s what happened in Harrisburg, Pa., recently. On April 30, a state Superior Court panel ruled that a child can have three legal parents. The case, Jacob v. Shultz-Jacob, involved two lesbians who were the legal co-parents of two children conceived with sperm donated by a friend. The panel held that the sperm donor and both women were all liable for child support. Arthur S. Leonard, a professor at New York Law School, observed, “I’m unaware of any other state appellate court that has found that a child has, simultaneously,...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (CNN) -- Francisco Rodriguez owes more than $10,000 in back child support payments in a paternity case involving a 15-year-old girl who, according to DNA results and the girl's mother, is not his daughter. Francisco Rodriguez is fighting for leniency in his paternity case. "It's not right. I'm not the father, " he said. Rodriguez, who is married with two daughters and a son from his wife's previous marriage, is fighting for leniency. "It's not right. I'm not the father, " he said at a recent court hearing. He says he knew nothing about the other girl...

Here’s a Delphic riddle for our times: When is your father not your father? Answer: when he’s a sperm donor. Consider a case now before the Kansas Supreme Court. An unmarried woman in her early thirties decided that she wanted a child and asked a friend to be a sperm donor. He agreed, one thing led to another, which led to a syringe of his sperm, which led to the birth of twins. The mother says that she always intended to raise the kids alone and never wanted the friend involved in their lives. The donor says that he planned...

JEFFERSON CITY — David Salazar is what many would call a "duped dad." Repeatedly, courts have ordered him to pay child support for a 5-year-old girl, even though no one — not a judge and not the child's mother — claims he's the father. In the eyes of many, Salazar, of Buchanan County, is the victim of a law that traps men into the child support payments, even though they can prove they're not the dads. -snip- That kind of statement angers Sen. Chris Koster, who is sponsoring the Missouri bill. Koster, R-Harrisonville, said he knew children would be harmed...

Why we are closer to cousins from our mother's side By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 1:51am GMT 28/02/2007 We tend to help cousins on our mother's side more than cousins on our father's, according to a study published today. Evolution by natural selection has shaped us to mistrust paternity, say researchers, and their findings confirm a prediction by evolutionary scientists that we tend to be kinder – altruistic – to the children of our mother's sister than those of our father's brother. Evolutionary biologists say that the more likely we are to have genes in common with our...

Gabor husband may be Smith's baby's dad LOS ANGELES - The husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor said Friday that he had a decade-long affair with Anna Nicole Smith and may be her infant daughter's father. The claim by Prince Frederick von Anhalt comes amid a paternity suit over Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn. The birth certificate lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, but former Smith boyfriend Larry Birkhead is waging a legal challenge, saying he is the father. "If you go back from September, she wasn't with one of those guys, she was with me," von Anhalt told...

LITTLE ROCK Even though a paternity test ruled out Anthony L- Parker as the father of a child in a child-support dispute, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled today he still has to pay support owed the mother before he took the test. The opinion, written by Associate Justice Donald L- Corbin, says state law and prior court cases make it clear that an "acknowledged father" cannot be relieved of past-due child support. Associate Justice Robert L. Brown wrote in a dissent that the opinion reached "a grossly unfair result." In her original ruling, McGowan wrote that forcing Parker to pay...

Child support enforcement programs are supported by all sides of the political spectrum, from women’s advocates on the left to traditionalists on the right. While this popularity is sometimes understandable, it has also allowed glaring and inexcusable abuses to fester and grow. Of these, none is more egregious than when men are forced to pay 18 years of child support for children who are not theirs, and who in many cases they’ve never even met. In “The Innocent Third Party: Victims of Paternity Fraud,” a new article in the American Bar Association's Family Law Quarterly, Washington DC attorney Ronald K....

(CBS) CHICAGO It's a trend that some fear may have long-term consequences. More unmarried women over the age of 25 are not waiting for Mr. Right. As CBS 2's Alita Guillen reports, these ladies are having children on their own. The fantasy father at their fingertips is a sperm donor with all the right stuff. Katherine Gehl and April Lashbrook had successful careers and dated, but they didn't have husbands. They heard their biological clocks ticking loudly. "It was like a time bomb," April said. "I need to go and have a baby and be a mother, and so I...

<p>In the United States, men confident about their paternity are almost always right, but those who insist that children are not their own are correct only 30 percent of the time, a new study finds.</p> <p>A review of more than 65 studies of paternity has concluded that actual rates of nonpaternity — cases in which a man incorrectly believes he is biologically related to a child — are much lower than the widely cited 10 percent.</p>

By: Steve Patterson (Chicago Sun-Times Reporter) ... Michael Wilford says he was simply a sperm donor. Christin Harris says he was much more than that to her. Now, the Glenview woman wants him to provide child support and college fund and pay medical expenses for the 2-year-old twin daughters he fathered. But the Downers Grove man says it's a case of "involuntary parentage" as he had no intention of doing anything more than provide his ex-girlfriend with the semen she needed to conceive. "No good deed goes unpunished," his attorney Enrico Mirabelli, said in court Tuesday. 'I Just Want Your...

Paternity fraud is rampant in the United States, triggering legislation and legal challenges in more than a dozen states, according to family law attorneys and fathers' rights activists. At issue: Men claim women are getting away with trickery -- DNA evidence may show a man is not the father, but the courts are still forcing him to pay child support anyway. "This is the new underdog," said Michigan family law attorney Michele Kelly, who represents mostly men tangled in paternity disputes. "I was a staunch feminist. I marched with Gloria Steinem. But the new victims in America are working men....

Contending that women have more options than they do in the event of an unintended pregnancy, men's rights activists are mounting a long shot legal campaign aimed at giving them the chance to opt out of financial responsibility for raising a child. The National Center for Men has prepared a lawsuit -- nicknamed Roe v. Wade for Men -- to be filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Michigan on behalf of a 25-year-old computer programmer ordered to pay child support for his ex-girlfriend's daughter. The suit addresses the issue of male reproductive rights, contending that lack of such rights...

NEW YORK -- Contending that women have more options than they do in the event of an unintended pregnancy, men's rights activists are mounting a long shot legal campaign aimed at giving them the chance to opt out of financial responsibility for raising a child. The National Center for Men has prepared a lawsuit -- nicknamed Roe v. Wade for Men -- to be filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Michigan on behalf of a 25-year-old computer programmer ordered to pay child support for his ex-girlfriend's daughter. The suit addresses the issue of male reproductive rights, contending that lack...

Saturday, February 18, 2006 Paternity fraud rampant in U.S. 30% of those named as fathers bilked of child support unjustly Posted: February 18, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com WASHINGTON – More than three years ago, a Maine district court judge ruled that Geoffrey Fisher no longer had to pay child support for a child that wasn't his. But that didn't stop the state from revoking Fisher's driver's license and coming after him for thousands of dollars it says he owes in back payments. Last year, Maine sent Fisher, 35, a letter seeking $11,450 in child support, even though...

A former Broward County man has been ordered to continue to pay child support for a child he did not father. He said his wife cheated on him; she denies it.Richard Parker said he never suspected that his wife had been cheating on him when she got pregnant seven years ago.When the Hollywood couple divorced in 2001, he agreed to pay her $1,200 a month in child support.But less than two years later, when his son was 5, he says he learned the awful truth: The boy he had raised as his own wasn't his.Parker sued his ex-wife, Margaret Parker,...

The confusing world of family law has taken an even more surreal turn with a Saskatchewan Court of Appeal decision ordering a man to pay child support for his stepdaughter. The twist? His ex-wife has married the child's biological father. You'd think this would let the guy off the hook. After all, his ex is now playing house with the kid's real dad. It made sense to the Court of Queen's Bench judge who ruled a year ago that the man wasn't required to pay support for his stepdaughter. That judge reduced the child-support arrears to $2,604 from $12,144. But...

Michael Jackson's ex-wife Debbie Rowe has told an Irish newspaper the singer is not the biological father of their children, Prince Michael Jr. and Paris. Rowe, who was married to Jackson for three years between 1996 and 1999, claims her 8-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter were both conceived using anonymous semen brought from a sperm bank. She tells the Sunday World, "Michael knows the truth -- that he is not the natural father of Prince Michael Jr. and Paris. He has to come clean. "I have no information whatsoever about the identity of the donor

We can usually sympathize with one or another party to a dispute: one is usually more in the right—or less in the wrong—than the other. But with the breakdown of accepted conventions, it increasingly happens that neither side arouses our sympathies. Take a recent case in Sweden, where a lesbian couple wished to have children. An understanding and liberal-minded male friend agreed to donate his sperm, and three children were born to one of the two women between 1992 and 1996. But then relations between the two women deteriorated, and they split up. The mother of the children found herself...

A Swedish man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple will have to pay child support, the Supreme Court has ruled. The man, from Örebro, is biological father to three children with the couple. The Supreme Court has now confirmed rulings by two lower courts that he is liable to support them. The 39-year old man donated his sperm to the lesbian couple at the beginning of the nineties. Three sons were born between 1992 and 1996. The man claims that it was never intended that he should take reponsibility for the children, but rather that the women would be...

It seems like a simple question — the kid’s mom and dad, right? The people who made the baby. But for decades, legal and technological changes have been reshaping families, as reproductive techniques like sperm donation, egg donation, and surrogate motherhood become far more embedded in our culture than most of us realize. Now we have kids with two moms, four moms, or none at all. These technologies, and the legal tangles they create, have shifted us to an understanding of family that pretends bodies don’t matter, and denies children’s need for their own mother and father. Here are only...

On Aug. 31, a small but precedent-setting case was decided in the Superior Court of New Jersey. The plaintiff discovered he was not the biological father of his eldest 'son', now in his 30s. The court affirmed the duped dad's legal right to sue the natural father for the cost of raising the 'child' and removed some limitations imposed by a lower court. The precedent: for the first time, New Jersey has extended a clear statutory deadline for filing on paternity cases. For the first time, a biological parent may be forced to pay child support for an offspring emancipated...

A man who found out 30 years after his youngest child's birth that he was not the father had the right to sue the biological father for nearly $110,000, the cost of raising the child, an appeals court ruled yesterday. In the first ruling to extend a statutory deadline in a paternity case, the appellate panel said the man could collect the money even though he missed the deadline under New Jersey's Parentage Act by eight years. The court said it made sense because the biological father, along with the duped man's wife, never told him he was not the...

http://www.canadiancrc.com/articles/Patriot_News_Sperm_donor_loses_appeal_child_support_23JUL04.htm Sperm donor loses appeal on child support The Patriot News, Friday, July 23, 2004, BY REGGIE SHEFFIELD of The Patriot-News, Harrisburg, PA, U.S.A. The state Superior Court yesterday ruled that a man must pay child support to a woman who conceived twin boys with his sperm through in vitro fertilization.The opinion upholds a Dauphin County Court order filed in 2002. Joel L. McKiernan now must pay up to $1,500 each month, but he argued that an oral agreement he had with Ivonne V. Ferguson protected him from any payments, according to court papers. When McKiernan agreed to be a...

About 4 percent of men may unknowingly be raising a child that really belongs to the mailman or some other guy, researchers speculate in a new study. Here's the real news: With modern methods, the truth will become known more frequently. Researchers pawed through a host of scientific articles published around the world from 1950 through last year. The perceived "paternal discrepancy rate," as it is called, ranges from less than 1 percent to as high as 30 percent in the various studies. Most researchers believe the rate is less than 10 percent. The author's settled on four percent --...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Perhaps one out of every 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, a finding that has huge health and social implications, according to report released Wednesday. Exposing so-called paternal discrepancy -- when a child is identified as being biologically fathered by someone other than the man who believes he is the father -- could lead to family violence and the breakup of many families. On the other hand, leaving paternal discrepancy hidden means having the wrong genetic information, which could have health consequences. A UK-based research team reviewed scientific research dealing with paternity...

Up to one in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, UK health researchers estimate. Increasing use of genetic testing for medical and legal reasons means more couples are discovering the biological proof of who fathered the child. The Liverpool John Moores University team reached its estimate based on research findings published between 1950 and 2004. The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Biological father Professor Mark Bellis and his team said that the implications of so-called paternal discrepancy were huge and largely ignored, even though the incidence was increasing. In the US, the...

Widespread paternity fraud is an urban myth - that is the finding of research published today which says claims up to 30 per cent of Australian men had not fathered children they believed to be theirs are wide of the mark. A more realistic figure is 1 to 3 per cent, according to Michael Gilding, a professor of sociology at Swinburne University. "The most outlandish figures have been quoted," he said. "But they have their origin in some very questionable research." When news broke that the federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, was not the biological father of his alleged son,...

July 4, 2005 7:35 PM No more illegitimate children in France - ministry PARIS (Reuters) - France abolished the legal terms "legitimate" and "illegitimate" for children Monday with a decree saying the distinction dating back to the Napoleonic Code of 1804 made no sense anymore. Abolishing the terms brings France's civil code in line with laws passed in recent years banning discrimination -- especially for inheritance -- between children born in or outside of a marriage, a Justice Ministry communique said. About 46 percent of French babies are now born out of wedlock, compared to about 10 percent in the...

LONDON (AFP) - Britain's royal family forced the late Princess Diana to blood test her younger son, Prince Harry, to prove he was not the offspring of an affair with an army officer, according to a newspaper report. Diana, who died in 1997, did not tell Harry why his blood was being taken, the Sun newspaper said in extracts from a book by Simone Simmons, an "energy healer" billed as a former close friend and confidante of the princess. Senior royals, notably Queen Elizabeth's husband Prince Philip, feared that their son, Prince Charles, who was married to Diana, might not...