To ask how you’d react if you found out your OH was once a sperm donor?

[HaleyJamesScott]

How would you feel if you found out your OH was a sperm donor at Uni? How about if some of his “children” found him after using Ancestry DNA and he thinks he wants relationships with them and their children?

Even if 5 children came forward decades later and expected your/DH’s estate to be split equally between them and your own children?

What a very strange comment. Anyone might expect our estate to be inherited from us but that doesn't mean they get to.

Worrying about birth order over the feelings of the person who has come forward would be irrational.

Why is it? The person who has come forward knows the circumstances of how they were conceived and should understand if they aren’t welcomed with open arms in to an already established family.

I've got to about page 12 in this thread. It is clear to me that you are getting wound up. I think you need to take a step back. I don't think this thread is helping you.

My suggestion is that you get on with your life assuming there will be no more contact for reasons you will never fully know. What he has told you may or may not be the real reason that his enthusiasm for a relationship has suddenly dried up. He has a lot to digest and you don't know what else is going on in his life right now.

Perhaps in due course - weeks, months or years into the future - he or another member of your family may get in touch with you. At that point it will be up to you to decide whether to accept the invitation to get to know them or to say "thanks but no thanks". These sorts of (re)unions are only going to work if both sides are feeling emotionally ready for the experience.

I thought a secret child of my husband's had turned up once. I opened the door to this young man, he was similar height to my husband, around 6ft, he had black hair like my husband, he was slim like my husband and whilst my husband is clearly mixed race this young man had a slightly tanned looked to his skin, in fact he was probably a bit darker than my kids but his features weren't like my husbands/my kids.

It was a bit awkward as I had a friend there.

The young man asked for my husband by name, I said I'd find him what was it about and the young man said it was personal. I went and got my husband, he went to the door, came straight back in looking a bit shaken, grabbed his coat and said he was going out.

It turned out it was the child of an ex, he remembered my husband fondly and wanted to come and tell him that his life had worked out well, he was getting married and his future wife was expecting their first baby.

My husband was so pleased he remembered, he was about 5 when my husband knew him and bought him toys and played soldiers with him but never saw him again when he split with the GF.

I really thought he was going to come back in and say that this was the son he knew nothing about. My friend was agog.

The birth order comments are so strange and antiquated. Experiencing fatherhood is not the same as using your genetic material to create a child. He wouldn't have been there at the birth, watch the child grow, marvelled at their first words, sat up with them when they have a tummy bug. The fact that a biological child has come forward and is interested in their genes doesn't change the childhood your child has already had. There is no suggestion that the new person will instantly become a member of the family - it would be impossible to create a bond that took a lifetime to create instantly. I would certainly be fine with DH getting to know them and I would be welcoming to them - I assume most normal people would be.

i wouldn’t care to meet one donor (I won’t say half sibling because they wouldn’t be) let alone 20 - 30 , plus I wouldn’t have cared if my parents had kept it from me

Genetically they would of course be your half siblings!

I suspect the OPs birth father and his wife are also processing the whole circumstances of the donating he did. How many potential people could come forward? If they say yes to one what next? It could be they are just processing a series of "what ifs." Very different scenario than a child given up for adoption.

Also regarding the adult children it could well be their main reaction is what the fuck were you thinking doing this for a "bit of beer money" if that is the explanation given. They may be disgusted and unimpressed indeed. And after that how it could affect the life they know. OP has no idea what kind of father he's been to them.

All the more reason to go slowly.

Also they have (adult) children together. If that's at all relevant.

I don't know if it is relevant. I couldn't have children and it would break my heart if I was his wife.

However if we did have children, it wouldn't worry me if he'd been an anonymous sperm donor. Or that he hadn't told me.

But if he wanted to build a relationship with the child, who already has a father (although I understand the OP wants medical info.) that would unsettle me although I can't justify why.

This article is quite an eye-opener... www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-46600325

In terms of inheritance disputes, what I think might happen is a situation where a donor conceived child contacts the bio father and they establish a relationship. Donor father meanwhile has an imprecisely written will, not updated, benefitting his children, and carks it. Sooner or later someone in that situation is going to argue that they were essentially treated as a child of the family, and there will be calls to change the law. Which I'm not saying will necessarily be successful, but if you think of the age of the typical donor when it started to become a more common thing, that generation are approaching the point where more of them will start to get the use out of their wills, iyswim.

If a donor decides to make a donor conceived child a beneficiary, then that is one thing.

Given the U.K. law has now changed so that any child who was conceived in the U.K. (so currently 16) can have access to their donor's details at 18, there is no way that any DC child will be able to challenge a donor's will.

It is specifically written into the legislation. Because bigger brains than yours have already thought of this.

There's obviously zero possibility of anyone ever campaigning to change that legislation, of course. If we can be sure of anything, it's that we as a society have full awareness of and consensus on every possible consequence of the combination of sperm donation and DNA testing.

I can’t c&p on my phone 🙄 but I agree the birth order comments are very strange and antiquated. They remind me a bit of when some men get all excited at the prospect of being someone’s ‘first’ (boak).

I absolutely understand it must be a massive shock after years and years of marriage, and I can’t help thinking that at some point in those years it would surely have sprung to mind and the DH made a conscience choice not to mention it and that would be a very difficult suspicion to live with, but ‘now our firstborn is not his firstborn!’ just seems a really strange response. A wife in this position has not been cheated of the experience of becoming first-time parents together, they still had and have that. It’s a bit like the divine right of kings muddled up with the technological possibilities of the 21st century.

Here’s a radical thing, though - I don’t actually believe my own children are any more important than other people’s. To me they are the most precious people in the world, of course, and they are the ones for whom I am most responsible, but I hope I would not throw anyone under the bus for them in the way the ‘I’d issue an ultimatum’ brigade seem to be recommending. I don’t think my putative partner would be any less of a parent to our children just by getting to know the adult child his sperm had helped produce.

Sure, check out the legal stuff (for pre-2005/outwith a clinic donations); sure, discuss the parameters of what would and wouldn’t be the sort of relationship you’d envisage developing. But seriously, ‘it’s the DC child or me’? If that’s not insecurity then I don’t know wtf is driving it. And these are people speculating on this thread, who have the time and distance to reflect and try to be the adult they want to be, rather than the actual wife in question who has had to actually deal with a hell of a shock and may be jumping from one perspective to the other as she tries to get her head around it.

Donations were and are made under a legal contract @BoxedWine. The child of a donor cannot petition to have a contract that they weren't even involved in making overturned.

This tells us absolutely nothing about whether there might be attempts to change this law in the future, though.

@Clymene The legislation that means donor conceived children don't have a claim on the donors only applies to children conceived with the help of a regulated clinic.

It doesn't apply to children conceived via private arrangements. In these cases, a child could very well have a claim on the donor/their estate. And a child maintenance claim could also be made.

Birth order is very important to kids. I do believe that bring first born or the middle child or the baby really does have an effect.
When I was a child my parents fostered a boy who was a few months older than me. They really did view him as a son and although I know that they loved me more because I was theirs my parents were scrupulously fair on how we were treated and I have to say (with some shame because that child had come from a really awful situation) that my nose was put out of joint a bit.
I can only imagine how that might feel if a biological child of one of my parents had turned up and they wanted to form a relationship.

But we're not talking about that are we @MulticolourMophead. We're talking about spermatozoon donated under HFEA regs.

www.gov.uk/legal-rights-for-egg-and-sperm-donors

Ido t know why my autocorrect wrote spermatozoon

@Clymene In this case, yes, it's under the regs. But, you've not been making the distinction, and some people reading this thread may be in the situation of having used, or been the result of, a private arrangement. They need to know the difference is there, it could affect them.

But @Aderyn19 it’s neither practical nor desirable to always avoid kids (especially adult kids) having their noses put out of joint. It seems to me not dissimilar to how my DC1’s nose was put decidedly out of joint by the arrival of DC2, and I respected and empathised with that but nonetheless I did it on purpose and I’m glad she’s here and I think that’s a life change which was good for the eldest.

Interesting (genuinely, not meaning it in a snotty way!) that you suggest the unexpected appearance of a biological (adult) child who was raised elsewhere by their own family might be an even more difficult adjustment than the actual sharing of your childhood home and parents’ love and attention with the foster child. I would anticipate that being completely the opposite way round for me (the unrelated one who my parents are loving and caring for being far more impactful than the biological one who they decide to start getting to know only in adulthood), and I bet this basic difference in just how essential biological relation feels explains a lot of the polarity on this thread.

Not quite the same thing, but I have two half-siblings: one with whom I grew up and shared my entire childhood and with whom I am very close, regard as my sister, and only occasionally remember to describe her as my half-sister when something specific happens to remind me; and one who I have never met, am not particularly bothered about meeting, and frequently forget even exists - obviously she is my ‘half-sister’ but my automatic label for her is ‘my dad’s other daughter’ which is perhaps more meaningful description. I believe that biology is important insofar as it was important to me that my children could explore their genetic heritage if they felt moved to do so, but personally I’m not much bought into it.

I think there’s also an interesting tension between the person our families often see us as (the family role we play) and who we perceive ourselves to be - and I think that can also be very bound up in birth order (eg I know my youngest sibling feels very frustrated by being regarded as the ‘baby’ who always needs a bit of help), so I don’t think it’s necessarily such a wondrous applecart to avoid upsetting either.

Fair point.

But I do think it's important to make it clear that men who were 'lured' by 'beer money' as students, which is what this thread is about, were donating under the auspices of the HFEA so are protected under their regulations.

I certainly agree that viewing ourselves through the perspective of our birth order isn't always helpful but it's part of what forms us. Finding out in adulthood that you've got an older sibling is bound to be unsettling.
I was massively put out by my foster brother's presence and he wasn't particularly enamored of me either - we were battling for our positions in our family and being kids, we didn't understand fully that there was room for us both. I know as an adult that my parents were trying to make up for all the love he'd never had. But adult me knows that my mum did love me more because I was hers. Biology really does matter. I wouldn't like it at all if my dad had another daughter who turned up and my dad started behaving like her parent. Siblings that your parents chose to have are different in that you grow up with them and they are a proper part of your family unit and everyone knows where they fit.

Hmm this is hard. Me of 10 years ago with babies would have been furious, and possibly delivered a 'them or is' ultimatum. Me now, after being through several years of utter crap, would feel quite welcoming. I think my DSs would absolutely love to have a sibling come out of the woodwork.

It's hideous. He'd be dumped if I was unmarried. If married....well, I'd be fuming he put me and my DD in that situation. Other children should not be my concern and certainly not what I bargained for.