Custody Fight’s Twist: Twins by 2 Fathers

A medical anomaly--8-month-old fraternal twins with different fathers--is the backdrop for a custody battle involving the girls’ mother, her boyfriend and her estranged husband.

DNA tests show that the husband fathered one girl and the boyfriend fathered the other, said lawyer John Ciccolella, who represents the husband. The tests say neither man could have sired the other girl.

The identities of the adults and the twins were withheld by the lawyers.

El Paso County District Judge John Hall is deciding who should get custody. He is expected to issue a temporary order next week.

The mother, who has moved out of state with her boyfriend, wants to keep full custody of the children, Ciccolella said, but the husband wants them to return to Colorado Springs so he can have contact with the child.

Cases in which twins have separate fathers are rare, said Dr. Bradley Hurst, an assistant professor of endocrinology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

“It is something that under any circumstances would be very rare, and I can’t imagine there can be more than five or 10 cases reported in the medical literature over the last 100 years,” he said. “Before the days of DNA testing, the ability to prove different fathers was kind of hard to do.”

For such pregnancies to occur, the mother would have to ovulate twice in one cycle and have intercourse with both men around the time she ovulated, he said.

The DNA tests were ordered to settle the paternity issue as part of divorce proceedings, Ciccolella said.