I mentioned before the woman who used sperm she obtained through oral sex to impregnate herself and then sued for child support. Now, there’s a case from a fertility clinic at NYU that is almost as bizarre:

This is a question for men tonight: what happens to sperm in a bank when you stop paying to keep it frozen? Can your estranged wife pick up the freezing bills and use your sperm, then come after you for child support payments? That is at the center of this lawsuit against a sperm bank, a wife and a notary public.

This couple is currently getting divorced but before the relationship hit the rocks they were trying to have kids. According to court documents, Mr. Deon Francois’ sperm was frozen at NYU. Then the break up happened – about two-and-a-half years ago. Mrs. Francois continued to pay $500 a year to keep the sperm frozen and underwent in vitro.

Mr. Francois says he didn’t know about any of this, in fact, he didn’t know that she was still trying to get pregnant. He thought that if nobody was paying to freeze the sperm, it would be thrown away and it was a non-issue.

…

Now the embryo is an 8-month old baby boy and a judge says Mr. Francois owes $150 a week in child support. What about a legal release to use the frozen sperm? She says he signed one, he says it’s a fake.

Now, I think that Mr. Francois was being an idiot when he assumed that the sperm would be thrown away. He should have called the bank to confirm that, or, better yet, gone in to check. Still, this is clearly outside of the original intent of laws on child support, and the fact that the judge went along with it is yet another obvious reason why a dedication to following the original intent of the law is the only valid litmus test for any judicial candidate.

( þ Neal Boortz )