I love this story. For once in the history of the world, the potential baby daddies are slagging each other, rather than the mama. Well done them.
"The state should eat it."
And the GOPers are mad about immigrants? Let's all just hate on these guys.
So what would be the Solomonic thing to do? I'm trying to figure out who we can cut in half but nothing comes readily to mind.
Twins, Max. Imagine the mathematical possibilities.
Huh. This is one situation where I can't see what the injustice would be in making them split the support. They've both got the same genetic relationship to the kid, they've both got the same social and physical relationship with the mother, there's no way to ever tell who was the actual cause of the pregnancy... at that point, what's the difference? But I figure there's probably no legal way to make that solution stick.
But I figure there's probably no legal way to make that solution stick.
Courts of equity have pretty remarkable powers with issues of first impression, is my understanding.
2: Their motivation for saying that is obnoxious, but it's actually the best possible solution. Can you imagine being the mother in this situation, having to wait around for your goddamn money while the court figures its shit out, and then having to depend on some resentful asshole to write you a check every month?
5 - that was my reaction. If the mother made whoopee with both on the date of conception, how could you tell?
3 - really reaffirms the whole "first time as tragedy, second time as farce" thing
Justice under-determines: it also wouldn't be unjust to flip a coin in order to decide which of them pays child support.
Makes me wonder - what would happen if the same case came up but DNA testing didn't exist? I feel like DNA testing makes people insist on a definitive answer, thus each brother arguing the existence of the other lets them off the hook. Whereas if there were more acceptance that things are sometimes unknowable, they might be able to split more readily.
Just musing.
I'm with w/d. Just flip a coin and be done with it.
I'm Oskar! I'm Oskar! Free oscar. Dot com.
The 'just make them split it' thing, if taken farther, would just a be a tax on fucking as a replacement for child supporting.
Isn't there a kind of tort where you hold both parties liable, because it's impossible to tell which person caused the harm, but you know that one of the two did. I think that there's a case with a hunting accident that's sort of the classic example.
If you could pinpoint through some sort of physics exactly which sperm fertilized the egg, I don't think that that knowledge would have any moral significance.
Fatherhood by firing squad!
Bukkake babies?
If the twin excuse doesn't fly for Persian porn stars, then it flies for NO ONE!
16: Summers v. Tice is the hunter's case. There's also Sindell v. Abbott Labs on market share liability, but that hasn't been followed at all, I don't think.
The result of the test has not only brought to light the limits of DNA evidence....
Is that the stupidest sentence ever written?
Let them take turns until she gets PG again, and then flip coins to pass out the two babies.
16: why wouldn't that have moral significance? One of them fathered the child; the other had sex but did not father a child. Normally, behavior that might have consequences but does not due to circumstances beyond the actor's knowledge and control is not penalized.
State-mandated menage à trois. All the responsibility, but also all the lovin'.
21: Nope. This is:
The test showed that both brothers have over a 99.9 percent probability of being the daddy
21: Nope. This is:
The test showed that both brothers have over a 99.9 percent probability of being the daddy
I just thought it was a quantum-indeterminacy thing.
22: That's a fair point, and I'll have to think through my intuition. I guess that part of it relates to the fact that genetically they're both the father. Of course, this is true of any set of identical twins who procreate, but coupled with the fact that they both had sex with her, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me. As LB said, "they've both got the same social and physical relationship with the mother."
(Semi-OT: I have always wondered about the case of identical twins who marry another set of identical twins. What would it be like to have cousins who were genetically one's siblings?)
24: I read that as saying they're each more genetically similar to the child than 999 out of 1000 people, which is really only stupid in the sense that it's probably something more on the order of magnitude of 99.9999 percent or higher.
I have always wondered about the case of identical twins who marry another set of identical twins. What would it be like to have cousins who were genetically one's siblings?
Or another pair of adults who were genetically your parents?
16, 20: I was trying to remember that example, too. Refresh me, w/d -- joint and several liability for both hunters? That analogy seems more apt than the market share analogy...
I doubt the odds are actually exactly 50-50 in this situation in which case the more likely than not civil standard would assign all the liability to the likelier brother. The article wasn't too clear but it seemed like maybe the judge ruled initially without knowing about the other brother and has since been more interested in justifying his original decision than actually figuring out who was the more likely father.
Forget the legal implications, how about the poor kid? Can you believe that both of them are so bitter and focused on the money that neither one of them is building a father/uncle relationship with her? Family is family, guys.
33: That, sadly, is the not terribly unusual part of the story.
Just noticed -- how does it happen that -gg-d posted this rather than the Apostropher?
32: Generally a good point, in that a judge probably would refuse to reconsider in the face of additional facts like that, but in this case I don't see how you sway the odds one way or the other, if (as I understood from the story) they both had sex with her the same day she got pregnant.
27: It's stupid in that clearly the standard probability calculation is incorrect if you know there's an identical twin that's also schtoinking the mother. At the very least divide by 2 or say "99.9% probability that one of them is the father" or something like that.
Isn't Apo having some kind of child soon? He might be busy with that.
I have always wondered about the case of identical twins who marry another set of identical twins. What would it be like to have cousins who were genetically one's siblings?
"Meet Kathy, who's lived most everywhere, from Zanzibar to Berkeley Square, while Patty's only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights, what a crazy pair!"
I have a friend whose mother's sister married her father's brother, which if you do the math I think gets you cousins who have the same mean genetic distance from you as your siblings, although I also think there's a difference in the variance. But I haven't sat down with paper and pencil and worked it out properly.
A la Kathy and Patty, shouldn't we be able to tell these twins apart because one has a mischievious twinkle, and the other, more responsible twin, always has to clean up after the first? I'm guessing the mischievious twin slept with her twice and then told the responsible twin that if they didn't pretend to split the evening, everyone would know that Jessica had lied originally to their parents and Elizabeth would feel guilty.
I have a friend whose mother's sister married her father's brother. Oooh, ooh, I know this one! That means she married herself!
No wait, it means she's her own grandpa.
Summers v. Tice is where there are three members of a hunting party, the one in the center gets ahead of the other two and then each of the other two, with equal degrees of negligence, shot at a quail over his head, and two pellets hit him (in the eye and lip). Burden shifts to defendants to prove that one of them didn't cause the injury, rather than on plaintiff to prove that one of them did. And yeah, joint and several liability when neither defendant could prove the other did it.
Isn't Apo having some kind of child soon?
In at most 10 days. The missus is in full-blown crazy nestbuilding mode but isn't very mobile (for obvious reasons), which means I'm spending a lot of time following orders instead of reading the internet.
Patty loves her rock and roll, A HOT DOG MAKES HER LOSE CONTROL. I mean, really.
43 I didn't get the blind coincidence part. If there were more than coincidence, then I agree with washerdreyer.
they've both got the same social and physical relationship with the mother
Do they, though? That wasn't clear to me from the story. Did the mother flip a coin to decide which of them to name as the father, or did she have some reason to believe he was more likely to be the father?
Only if the twins were conjoined.
A HOT DOG MAKES HER LOSE CONTROL.
Seriously awesome.
Only if the twins were conjoined.
I loved Twin Falls, Idaho.
49: Maybe the Farrelly brothers.
The story could be used for good. I'm picturing a series of public service commercials about the dangers of excessive drinking: "And those twins!"
15: Or a tax on non-custodial parents, generally speaking; or, if we were *really* a decent society, an entitlement to child support by the state paid for through general taxes.
54- Hey then we could make the urban legend true, the one about our favorite Anglo-Saxonism being an early acronym.
I really want it to turn out that the baby is a tetragametic chimera, but that would probably be too perfect.
54: Sure, next thing you'll be wanting shit like quality early childhood education, affordable healthcare, and a minimum wage sufficient to enable full-time workers to rise above poverty. Commie.
36
Other things being equal the first brother would appear to be the favorite since in cases where either brother would have impregnated her the winner will be the one whose sperm gets there first and the first brother's sperm has a significant head start.
40
I think this is wrong normal cousins share 1/8th of their genes, double cousins share 1/4th and siblings share 1/2.
47
The story left out a lot like which brother was richer.
59: Oh, you're right. I dropped a step, and figured out genetic similarity to an aunt or uncle, which is 1/4, rather than a cousin, and then doubled that for double cousins.
59 But the cousins in this case have redundant grandparents, meaning all of their genes came from the same two people, only two generations ago instead of one generation ago. So they're as closely related as siblings, on average.
Dueling mathematicians! But I think Shearer's right -- remember there are four, rather than two, grandparents.
Oh, right. Still four grandparents. They're as closely related as two siblings with different parents who have the same parents.
two siblings with different parents who have the same parents.
Precisely!
58. Saturday night at the sperm races.
I doubt the odds are actually exactly 50-50
Boy, what a hearing: "Do you come a lot? Did you come a lot this time? When did you pull out? What position were you in?" etc. etc. bleah.
The "first come, first served" (with a paternity suit) heuristic is perhaps as good as any.
"Your honor, my brother has always shot bigger wads than I have. Mine are rather thin and runny."
Well, it's hard to pinpoint conception to the day, and there's therefore maybe one twin who is more likely to be the father on the basis of having had sex with the mother more often in the relevant three or four day window, or whatever it is.
Dan Savage discovered at some point that paternity testing people deal with a case like this "every so often": it's unusual but not crazily rare. http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=6692
in husband x's family on his mom's side (his mom's female cousins) identical twin women married identical twin men, and they had 5 or so kids apiece, (including at least one set of identical twins in each family) and lived next door to each other. apparently whoever was in a given house a dinner time just ate there. there was an article about them in Life magazine in the 60s.