Biological father on DNA test

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I would be grateful to hear people's thoughts. I will try to keep it short but it's a bit of a tale. Have NC, I am a regular poster on various topics.

I was brought up by my mum and the man she led me to believe was my father. In fact, I found out as a teenager, by coming across some papers by chance, that he was not my father, but my stepfather, who had adopted me when I was a toddler. I never told her that I knew, my family are the archetypal "brush everything under the carpet" family, and my mother deals incredibly badly with any stress or conflict. It didn’t seem to really matter and I loved my parents and had a happy life so I left it. I have told both my husbands about this but no-one else ever.

Fast forward to having a baby 12 years ago, and then turning 50 a few years after that and I decided to try and find my biological father, just out of interest at this stage of my life. I was able to get the name from the Local Authority who handled the adoption, I found out his address easily on the internet, and wrote him a letter, basically saying that I believed I was his daughter (obv giving my date of birth and my mother’s name) and that if he wanted to contact me I would be interested in chatting to him. I ended by saying that I am a successful and happy person with a good family (I am a senior professional) and I am not looking for money or anything like that, and also that if he did not contact me I would not seek to contact him again, but wished him well.

This was nearly a decade ago and he did not contact me (I still to this day have the same phone number and email address that I gave on the letter). I was disappointed tbh but I just got on with life. I know he is alive (well, he was a couple of years ago anyway, as there was a media article about a person related to him and this showed he was present at a function that was held).

A few weeks ago I did a DNA test. This showed many relatives on my biological father’s side, including his sister (so my aunt) and hundreds of more distant relatives. I can’t contact any of them, can I, having given him the reassurance years ago that I would not contact him? (Public DNA testing was not something available at the time I wrote him the letter, or at least I did not know about it, so it would not have factored into my thinking).

Are you confident that he got the letter? Can you retry? Get signed for delivery/ social media contact too.
People change views too. He may want to hear from you this time around

It's a dilemma for sure. I suppose I cannot know for sure that he got the letter, but it is likely that he did. Most post gets to its destination. I can only suppose why he never got back to me, but have to assume that he decided not to for a reason. For all I know the letter may have caused him problems. He is married and has two childen, the oldest of which is about two years younger than me and has an almost identical name to mine (the male version of my name). I have no idea if he even knew of my existence prior to getting my letter. It may well have caused him all sorts of difficulty. And I did make the promise not to contact him again. If I did I would be breaking that promise and I have no idea what impact it may have on him/his family.

I wouldn't contact his wider family, his sister, etc as you don't know how much they know or don't know and what difficulties it could cause for him or for you if they decide to turn against the messenger.

Will the relatives have been notified that you have "matched" with them on whichever DNA platform you've used, and therefore be able to contact you?

If so I'd probably leave the ball in their court.

I think you can contact any of your relatives that you would like to, just be sensitive to the fact that it seems they don’t know about you.

No you really can’t contact them.

For whatever reason this man didn’t want to be in contact, and given he was prepared to sign away his parental rights chances are his opinions haven’t changed.

But his wider family may not know that you even exist, and as hard as it is you can’t potentially throw this kind of bombshell into their midst.

FWIW a family member recently found out that their father had remarried and that they had two more siblings. One of them had sadly died some years ago, but he contacted the other one, and after initially saying that she would be happy to talk to him, and that it was a shock having found out she had 6 siblings she had no idea existed, she changed her mind and told him never to contact her again.

Family can be brutal, and TBH if someone contacted me to tell me another family member of mine had a child they had given up for adoption I probably wouldn’t thank them for it.

TV programmes such as “long lost family” paint a very unrealistic picture of family reunions where everyone is extatic and goes on to form wonderful relationships. But the reality is very rarely like that. In fact I wonder how many of the people on long lost family end up saying they just don’t want to know vs the ones who do.

@HeartsAndClubs

FWIW a family member recently found out that their father had remarried and that they had two more siblings. One of them had sadly died some years ago, but he contacted the other one, and after initially saying that she would be happy to talk to him, and that it was a shock having found out she had 6 siblings she had no idea existed, she changed her mind and told him never to contact her again.

Family can be brutal, and TBH if someone contacted me to tell me another family member of mine had a child they had given up for adoption I probably wouldn’t thank them for it.

TV programmes such as “long lost family” paint a very unrealistic picture of family reunions where everyone is extatic and goes on to form wonderful relationships. But the reality is very rarely like that. In fact I wonder how many of the people on long lost family end up saying they just don’t want to know vs the ones who do.

TBH if someone contacted me to tell me another family member of mine had a child they had given up for adoption I probably wouldn’t thank them for it.

You sound lovely....

@HeartsAndClubs

No you really can’t contact them.

For whatever reason this man didn’t want to be in contact, and given he was prepared to sign away his parental rights chances are his opinions haven’t changed.

But his wider family may not know that you even exist, and as hard as it is you can’t potentially throw this kind of bombshell into their midst.

While I agree with this I do think it is horrible.

I have no tolerence at all for men or women who abandon children and their responsibility to them.

Sorry OP, rant over!

@CanIPleaseHaveOne I totally agree. My DD's Dad walked away when she was 1. She's nearly 7 now 😳

[quote Almostmenopausal]@CanIPleaseHaveOne I totally agree. My DD's Dad walked away when she was 1. She's nearly 7 now 😳[/quote]
Just bloody awful.

I am not at all sure why this is allowed happen.There should be the severest of consequences for this.

If they have done Dna ancestry
And ticked they want to be contacted via the site
Then you can do so
Since they will have expressed willingness to be contacted

Two close relatives have been found thru similar including one adoption (which was very sensitive about contacting the bio family ) and all good

"I have no idea if he even knew of my existence prior to getting my letter."

If he was named in adoption papers is likely he knew?

The actress Susan Jameson (New tricks) gave up her baby son for adoption because she wanted to be an actress...She changed her mind when she was pregnant with her daughter and obviously has a close loving relationship with her daughter. She was indignant when her adopted son contacted her as an adult and told him she wanted nothing to do with him.
She sounds horrible, choosing to keep a child based on their gender/sex

It's not all on you - your relatives, particularly your aunt, will be getting notifications saying that a new close DNA match has popped up. How they are handling that will depend a lot on whether they knew of your existence or not.

You can keep your word and still communicate with your other relatives if you are interested in finding out more about your genetic family. The usual suggested wording is along the lines of saying hello, observing the close match and saying you'd love to find out more about how you're related and then leave the door open to them.

Assuming you mean you found the relatives through one of these databases, they would be alerted to you as well wouldn’t they? (Sorry I have not used one but my sister has and found some cousins of ours). Anyways, if that is the case, I would not contact them, but I would answer if they contacted me.

I have to say, I have no idea whether my bio father even knew that my mother was pregnant, so cannot conclude that he "walked away" (when I was a baby I mean). He was not involved in the adoption process and my mother told the Local Authority his name but said that he had "left the country" (he hadn't, he still lives in the same village he has lived in all his life). I assume she just didn't want him involved at all, for whatever reason (they were both just 18 at the time so perhaps his family were a factor).

I have always wondered, since getting the records and his name, whther my mum had just made up a name, and the person I wrote to was nothing to do with me at all (it is a fairly common name and surname). So I was kind of pleasantly surprised when the DNA result showed that he is undoubtedly my father. In that, well, at least she didn't lie about that.

I think you need to work out what it is you hope will happen from you contacting the relatives.

Although the aunt has had her DNA done, she clearly does not go to the Ancestry site regularly, she has not logged on for several years, so she may well not be aware of the match. The other matches are all much more distant so would arouse much less interest in people (there are literally thousands of matches, I can't imagine many people look through them all, never mind contact them!)

On Ancestry you don't get notifications about matches, you have to log on to see them, you only get notifications if someone messages you through the site).

I can see why you might be tempted to contact your wider family, but you say yourself that you are a successful and happy person with a good family so I guess it might make sense to concentrate on that. The natural urge to want to seek out your relatives is I understand very strong, but it could very well create more problems for them and you..... so it might be best to resist the temptation.

@mediumsize

Although the aunt has had her DNA done, she clearly does not go to the Ancestry site regularly, she has not logged on for several years, so she may well not be aware of the match. The other matches are all much more distant so would arouse much less interest in people (there are literally thousands of matches, I can't imagine many people look through them all, never mind contact them!)

On Ancestry you don't get notifications about matches, you have to log on to see them, you only get notifications if someone messages you through the site).

I get some email notifications from Ancestry, one recently was a first cousin match. I’m not sure if they only notify for reasonably close matches or not, but your relatives may be notified.

I think my motivation would be just the same curiosity that has seen me contacting a number of matches from my mother's side, just to know more about my ancestry. I have found out connections to a number of interesting families/ethnicities etc, which I did not know about before and have found quite fun. I now know, for example, what tartan I would wear (ie what Scottish clan I am from), that I am a little bit Jewish, and there are some quite famous people I am related to, none of which I knew before. Also the occupations of some of my ancestors are interesting. Not important stuff in daily life, just interesting. (What is important, I guess, is that most of my ancestors were very long-lived, which is reassuring!).

But I think contacting people from my father's side would potentially cause problems for people that would outweigh any interest or fun I may get. I will, I think, just see if anyone ever contacts me.

I would contact the aunt. When you do your DNA test for ancestry, you know that people who you match with are likely to contact you.

OP, close matches may get a notification, however they won’t be able to use the message service if they’re not currently paying a subscription.

I would message them, but include an email address in case they want to reply but can’t via Ancestry. Also include something like, “If you don’t have time for this at the moment, or if you’re just not currently interested, I’d appreciate you letting me know”.

Also, be aware whether you are writing to the DNA owner or someone managing their account.

I reckon you’ll find at least one relative happy to be in touch with you.

I'm going to go against the grain and say I would contact her.