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Woman Wants Semen Donor To Pay Child Support
(STNG) Michael Wilford says he wanted nothing more than to help the woman he was dating fulfill her lifelong dream of having a baby.
Christin Harris says they were in love, practically living together and talked about raising children.
In a Cook County courtroom Friday, Judge Thomas Kelley listened to Harris detail the reasons she thinks Wilford should have to pay child support for the twins conceived by the semen he provided for her in-vitro fertilization.
Wilford says Harris tricked him into signing documents after she gave birth in which he acknowledges being their father and accepts responsibility for them.
Now Harris is using those documents to demand child support, in a trial that began last month over her civil lawsuit.
But that deception is part of a larger pattern of manipulation by Harris, alleges Wilford’s attorney, Enrico Mirabelli.
“Most people who say, ‘All I want is your sperm,’ who then have a child, that’s usually enough for them,” he said before court. “In this case, that wasn’t enough.”
In court Friday, Harris, 45, relied on her Palm Pilot to recite dates – including when she says Wilford, 39, proposed marriage.
But Wilford says there was no marriage proposal – providing detailed travel records showing he wasn’t in town the day she says they lay in bed and he proposed.
And while Harris said Wilford slept at her house “very frequently” and that he was practically living there while they dated, Wilford’s records show he was often traveling in the months she says they were living together.
Harris also testified she visited fertility doctors three times in an effort to get pregnant before meeting Wilford in 2002, adding that Wilford, a triathlete, fit the “very healthy” profile she was seeking earlier in a sperm donor.
Mirabelli says Harris, of Glenview, came into the relationship with a plan to get pregnant, while Wilford, formerly of Downers Grove, claims one of the reasons he was divorcing his wife was because he didn’t want more kids.
The trial is taking place only a few days each month and will resume in August, when Wilford plans to explain to Kelley why he provided Harris with semen, asserting he never thought he might someday be responsible for the babies conceived.
He says he was not involved with her pregnancy, only saw the babies a couple times after their birth and was not involved with name selection or any other matters, which he says shows he never expected to someday be supporting them.
Wilford says Harris called him to a bank to sign documents she said were to set up a savings account for the 2-year-old girls but that the documents instead actually established paternity.
After Wilford gives his side in August, a written decision is expected from Kelley in the fall.