US: A woman who gave birth to twins sired by different fathers has confessed in court that she slept with different men during her conception period in a landmark child support case.
The incredible case was revealed after the woman, identified only as T.M., named her current boyfriend as the father of her twins.
But T.M. admitted before maternity papers were signed that she had actually slept with a different man a week after she believed she conceived with her boyfriend.
A paternity test was carried out and it was revealed that the two men had each fathered one of the twins, who are now toddlers.
Now the woman's original partner only has to pay out child support for one of the children.
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Passaic County Judge Sohail Mohammad made the ruling in the paternity case on Monday, the New Jersey Law Journal reported.
Paternity tests showed the woman's former boyfriend was almost certainly the father of one twin – but wasn't the father of the other.
Now he only has to pay out Sh2600 ($28) – per week for his daughter.
Judge Mohammad said he found just two other court cases of a woman giving birth to twins from separate dads, which occurs in one out of every 13,000 reported paternity cases involving twins.
It seems medically impossible, but a woman can give birth to twins with two fathers when she has sex with two different men in the same week.
In a process known as heteropaternal superfecundation, the rare incident occurs when a woman releases two eggs during her menstrual cycle and different men fertilise one egg each.
It is a more common occurrence when the same dad fertilises two eggs during separate incidences of sex.
Amazingly, it is also possible for a woman to give birth to twins who have been conceived weeks or even months apart, if she continues to ovulate even after she has become pregnant, in a process called superfetation.
It is claimed that superfetation is common in some species of animals, but is extremely rare in humans.
In 2009, Todd and Julia Grovenburg of Fort Smith, Arkansas, conceived an additional child while already pregnant with a baby conceived two and a half weeks earlier.
Both healthy babies were delivered through Caesarean section on December 2, 2009, when Julia, 33, became one of only 11 women ever reported to conceive while already pregnant.
“It’s common knowledge and written down in medical books that you can’t get pregnant while already pregnant," Julia said.
“But somehow, after years of trying to conceive, I became the exception to the rule – getting pregnant twice in two weeks.”