I Want My Sperm Back

Hylton-Potts - London Based Law Firm Helping People Across the UK since 1999

If a man’s sperm results in the conception of a child, that man is liable to support the child.

What is wrong with that you say?

What is wrong is it applies no matter how the girl gets hold of the sperm. She could steal it (for example from a used condom left in a waste paper basket) or hold it in her mouth (ask Boris Becker) or she may never had even have met the man.

This could happen to you. We have launched a campaign to amend the law so that although the man is legally liable to pay, he can get all the money back (a full indemnity) from the mother, who might then think twice about paying this mean trick.

If you wish to sign the petition please do so online and watch this website for developments.

We currently have 4252 people signed up to the petition (as of today).

Possession is ten-tenths of the law.

When Boris Becker dropped by a London restaurant in 1999, he had no idea his bill would be so enormous: £2 million. That’s the amount he paid to settle a paternity claim brought by a waitress, who claimed she had a single sexual encounter that night.

Becker insisted he only had oral sex, and that his lawyers suggested the sometime model had inseminated herself. Legally, the how, where and why of the child’s conception are irrelevant. Now British courts have ruled that regardless of the circumstances behind a man’s becoming a father, he has to support the child.

After insemination, a man has no similar protection of his right to decide whether to become a father. But at what moment does he lose that right? Is ejaculation the legal point of no return? Does the fact that a woman lies to him about her birth control, retrieves his semen from a discarded condom, sexually assaults him after he’s fallen unconscious or rapes him, before he’s reached adulthood ,mitigate in any way his financial responsibility?

The answer, absurdly, is no. At present, no matter how a woman gets her hands on his semen (short of using a sperm bank, where the donors are anonymous), a man has no chance of avoiding the financial obligations of unexpected progeny. It is an outrageous flaw  in the legal system that allows women not only to “steal” semen, but also to demand money from unwilling fathers- a way of finding a sperm donor who also pays for the child.

Lying to a man about using birth control is the most common situation where men get roped into fatherhood. Consider the recent case of the BT executive. He met a woman at a nightclub, had a fling and expected the relationship to end, when she left for an extended trip to Australia. Instead, she called to say she was pregnant with his child.

Having used protection throughout the relationship, the executive felt he had been a victim of bad luck. But the woman admitted, first during an emotional phone conversation and later in a confessional letter, that she had taken his semen from a discarded condom while he was in the shower. Despite this, a court ordered the new father to pay support. He now finds himself on the hook for £167,000 before the child turns 18.

Until there is a law against misappropriating sperm, men who take reasonable precautions not to inseminate or who trust their partners to be honest about birth control, have no recourse should a pregnancy occur. Because, as any number of men can attest, semen can be the gift that keeps on taking.

Rodney Hylton-Potts is a Family Lawyer based in London with clients nationwide.