A man in England mixed his sperm with his father's to help get his partner pregnant as he couldn't afford IVF treatment.
As reported by The Guardian, the man has not been named for legal reasons, and is only identified as PQ in court documents.
The outlet said that PQ and his partner JK had experienced fertility problems and the couple couldn't afford IVF treatment – a combination of medicines and surgical procedures to help sperm fertilize an egg and help a woman conceive.
Therefore, PQ decided to mix his sperm with his father's (RS), which was then injected into the woman. The arrangement, which the judge was informed had been "always intended" to be kept secret, led to the birth of a now five-year-old boy (named D in the court documents).
But once the local council was informed about the circumstances of the conception, it launched a legal bid to find the parentage of the child. It approached the high court urging it to direct the man to carry out a DNA test to determine whether the man was D's father. However, the judge dismissed the bid on Thursday, saying that he found the council had "no stake in the outcome".
"It may wish to know who is D's biological father, but it has no stake in the outcome of its application. A wish to uphold the public interest in maintaining accurate records of births does not confer a personal interest in the determination of such an application," the judge said in his order.
He concluded that the decision rests with the family - whether they want to undergo a paternity test to tell the child about his real father.
Sky News quoted the judge as saying that the family had "created a welfare minefield", adding: "I cannot believe that JK, PQ and (his father) RS properly thought through the ramifications of their scheme for JK to become pregnant, otherwise it is unlikely that they would have embarked upon it."
He said the man had an established father-and-son relationship with the child and it was up to him and the boy's mother to "manage the latent risks to his welfare".
