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Splitting the Babies: Who Are Daddies of Diverse Twins?

By William Vogeler, Esq. on November 07, 2017 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

King Solomon is rolling over in his grave right now.

A woman gave birth to twins from different races. Read that sentence again, then imagine King Solomon with his head between his hands.

It was a migraine-inducing puzzle: one of the babies was African-American and the other was Chinese. But this is not Ripley's Believe It Or Not; this is FindLaw.

Believe It Or Not

It was not as hard to figure out the parentage as it was to sort out the legal relationships. Genetic testing unraveled the paternal connections.

One twin was fathered by the woman's spouse and the other child came from a Chinese couple who hired her as a surrogate. It's not clear what the order of conception was, but the fertilized egg probably came first.

In any case, these things do happen in surrogacy cases. It's just not supposed to happen.

Since the surrogate signed waivers, she unknowingly gave up parental rights to her own child.

Who's Your Mamma?

Ellen Trachman, a surrogacy attorney, said the surrogacy agency and the intended parents were talking about putting the child up for adoption.

"What?!" she wrote for Above the Law. "That's crazy."

The story ended well, however, when the surrogate and her genetic child were reunited. Trachman said a surrogate should be deemed the legal parent of her own genetic child -- even if she disregards a doctor's orders to abstain from sex.

Surrogates may have to sign "no sex" clauses to avoid the predicament in the future, Trachman said. Not sure how that would have worked in the past with King Solomon, who had 1,000 wives.

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