Twins Try to Avoid Paying Child Support, Plan Backfires

Both men are ultimately ordered to pay up
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 3, 2019 11:59 AM CDT
Twins' Plan to Avoid Paying Child Support Backfires
Stock photo.   (Getty Images / designer491)

Identical twin brothers had a plan to outsmart Brazil's family court system, but it ended up backfiring on them. Authorities say one of the Brazilian twins fathered a girl, now 9, during a brief relationship with the girl's mother. The woman began court proceedings in 2017, and the man was made to take a DNA test. It came back positive, but he claimed his twin brother was the actual father. That man's DNA test also came back positive, and the men refused to come clean on who was the true father. Rather than getting out of paying child support, however, the men were both ordered to pay, the BBC reports. The judge said each man will have to pay about $60 per month and share in medical, dental, clothing, and school costs.

"He told me he had a twin brother, but I wasn’t introduced. At the time I didn’t suspect anything," the girl's mother said in a court statement, per the Guardian. The judge said the twins had often impersonated each other to trick women: "Since adolescence, the pair used their identical appearance to hide betrayals and win over more women," the justice tribunal said in a statement. The girl will receive twice the child support as other children from the same economic background in Brazil, but she will also have the names of both men on her birth certificate. Because of that, her mother plans to appeal in an attempt to uncover the truth: "We believe the child has the right to know who the biological father is," says the woman's attorney. (Second-ever case of semi-identical twins identified.)

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