True Story©… Accidental Miscegenation

     I live in this weird little world where innocuous deeds of my past often spend years – DECADES – compounding and coming back here in my 40s for a visit.

Buckle up, we’re going for a ride this week y’all.

     So I’m sitting on the couch with the Wife Person™ earlier in the summer on my lunch break when we get a knock at the door and a ring of the doorbell.  I glance up at the panel and see that it is not one of the neighborhood kids asking can mine come out and play or anyone selling anything.  There is a sheriff department cruiser at the street so I figure I better not ignore this one.

Me: “Can I help you sir?”

He’s holding a manila envelope and hands it to me…

Deputy: “You’ve been served”

… fuck™.

     Back in the house, I open up the envelope to discover just what it is that I have or am being accused of to end in being served papers of any kind here.  Wife Person™ is similarly interested in the contents of this parcel.

Me: “It says I am being summoned to family court to settle a matter of child support”

Wife Person™: “Child support?  But you don’t have any unknown kids out here.”

Me: “Truth…  Lemme go request this time off and clear this shit up.”

     Less than ten minutes later, a white man is in my driveway looking QUITE angry.  Where the fuck are these people even coming from!?
I have a few minutes left on lunch, I will address him…

Me: “Can I help you?”

Him: “You can pay for your fuckin’ KID, asshole!”

Me: “Excuse me?”

Him: “I just paid 18 years for a kid I knew wasn’t mine.  Ancestry says she is yours and I intend to get my money back!”

Me: “Sir, I don’t know you or your – I would assume EX – wife or kid, but I don’t have a clue what you’re on about right now.  Please get off of my property.”

Him: “Oh, we’ll see you in court!”

Me: “Sure, uh-huh.”

     Rather than continue this exchange, I just went back into my house and took the necessary time off of work to handle whatever the fuck ever is going on here.  The court date was set for about three weeks ago yesterday at 8:30am.  Cool, I don’t even have to take a whole day off of work for this.

     The day comes…  I get up and shower and actually bother to put on long pants and go downtown to the court house.
After leaving my phone and everything but my ID and car key behind in the car, I was seated in the front row of family court waiting on my name to be called so I could get to the bottom of this.  Wife Person™ elected not to come along for this ride so as to not murder me if I HAD been going about my life with unknown-unknown babies all over the place.
Anyway…  My (and the man who presented the suit, along with the child’s mother) name was called and we were before the judge…

Judge: “Mr [redacted], you’re here today because this man has presented with proof that you are the rightful father of a child he was fraudulently left to raise and thereafter learned of your paternity following a retail DNA testing.”

I… Was…  FLOORED!

Me: “Your honor, may I ask a couple of questions?”

Judge: “Go ahead…”

Me: “I have honestly never met this child or her mother here.  I would like to know when she might have been born or perhaps some circumstances surrounding her conception.”

Judge: “Well I guess that is only fair, I present her parents to answer your questions.”

     The man stands up first…

Him: “My now-ex-wife and I…  We were having a tough time conceiving back in 2001-02.  We went to a fertility clinic and were presented with the option of in vitro SUPPOSEDLY using a sperm donor…”

     Holy shit, I know EXACTLY what had happened…  I’mma let him finish though.

Him: “…  the difficulty to conceive was a MAJOR strain on our marriage and finances.  I had  my suspicions of infidelity and when my daughter was born and then her skin started to darken, I--…  I just couldn’t anymore.  I had already signed the birth certificate so I was on the hook for her when my wife and I split.  There’s no history that either of us found in our family that would have led this to be possible, so when we went to ancestry and found a likely paternal relation IN TOWN, I contacted my lawyer.”

Me: “Your honor, may I?”

Judge: “Go ahead.”

Me: “Listen sir, I am sorry to hear of what got you here, but the mistake here is not of me, nor is it your ex-wife there.”

     Every face in the room was puzzled…  I continued.

Me: “The issue at hand here is not anything your wife may have or not done outside of your marriage, at least not with me.  I don’t know the woman, this is the first time I have seen her in my life.  Several years ago, however, I was a regular donor to a sperm bank…”

Him: “Wow”

Me: “…  so your most likely culprit here if you went into the clinic and came out with an unexpectedly brown baby is that there was a bookkeeping problem or some other mixup at the clinic.”

Judge: “This sounds a bit far-fetched, do you have proof of this?”

Me: “If you’ll allow it, I need to go to my file cabinet in my garage.  My house is 4 miles away, I can be home and back in here in about 30 minutes?”

Him: “Wild as this all sounds, I feel I have to allow it.  We’ll take a 45-minute break for you to go get it.”

I bolted from the court and directly to the house, probably flirting with the idea of a speeding ticket the whole time.  I knew exactly which drawer in the file cabinet I’d kept the sperm bank documents in because I had recently cleaned out the cabinet and remembered thinking “heh, these were the years I was getting paid to beat off.”  I was back in my seat with 7 minutes to spare.

Judge: “Do you have what you went for?”

Me: “Yes sir I do…  You will find in this packet, the confidentiality agreement and contracts I had to sign as a donor.  Release of paternal rights AND responsibility.  There is also payment schedules and tax forms.”

Judge: “Just a moment…”

He pored over the paperwork for a few minutes before turning to the plaintiff and asking a series of confirmatory questions about the location and time period of their IVF.  Once they offered the answers to the questions while conferring with his lawyer at each one, the judge offered to them that they’d be better served to “take their beef to the fertility clinic and sperm bank, but with a beautiful and healthy now-adult daughter, they should shy away from further traumatizing her by continuing this ordeal.”
I stood and asked “can I go?” and with something between a sneer and a begrudging smirk, the judge allowed me to leave.

When I got home, I hopped onto the ol Google machine and learned that these kind of fuckups at fertility doctors are more common than one might expect.  Apparently they’re usually a result of the doctor’s own miscreance and perverse desire to have a TON of children out in the world.  The downside, of course, is the unknowing diluting of the genepool in the areas that their clinics serviced.  How many people are out here having three headed babies with someone they didn’t know was their cousin?
Never mind…  that is another question for another time.  I need to get to my living room to do the “Not  (technically) the Father” dance for the Wife Person™.