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).

@Onebrokentoe I think I may have my notifications set differently! So it is possible then that the aunt may see a notifcaton that she has an unexpected 25% match?

I do not keep my DNA linked to the tree I have made for my father's family (I made a separate tree for my mother's family, which I keep the DNA linked to). So she would see the match but not be able to see the exact relationship.

@ofwarren The thing is that the aunt may well have no idea I exist, and so would not have factored in her (elder) brother having a completely unknown child when she did her DNA.

I have no tolerence at all for men or women who abandon children and their responsibility to them. I agree. But that is his doing. His wider family are unlikely to be complicit. And if they were, then that says the same about them as well.

@HeartsAndClubs as I said, I have no idea if he ever knew I existed. So I cannot confidently place any blame on him or his family for the original absence. I was disappointed when he did not reply to my letter of course, but he must have had his reasons, and failing to respond to a 50-year old woman is not the same as walking away from a child.

[quote mediumsize]@ofwarren The thing is that the aunt may well have no idea I exist, and so would not have factored in her (elder) brother having a completely unknown child when she did her DNA.[/quote]
You don't know that
Maybe she knows
And is looking for you

With the dna tests you can elect to be found yourself so they can contact you if they want too. Given that you wrote and he didn't reply I wouldn't seek contact again but if you have any half siblings it's legitimate to contact them directly

If you do DNA
It us with knowledge you may find things!
You will likely both have received notification

I see this as your right...

You didn't ask to be in this situation - I believe your bio father has no absolute right to privacy? If this stops you contacting bio relatives who may be very happy to hear from you?

This means his inaction means you are unable to access either interesting /essential history... A pal was a closed adoption-ots been a right pain for her in terms of her medical history.

@ Almostmenopausal but wider family are unlikely to make the OP feel anything but worse about her father. Unless they agree that he was a thoughtless bastard with no consideration for the child he abandoned, assuming he even knew the child existed, what else can they say? That he went on to have another family, that he’s a doting father and grandfather and that everyone loves him? This would only make the OP feel worse about the fact that he wasn’t in her life and chose never to respond to her letter.

In my family member’s case the father went on to remarry and from what we know, was happily married and a wonderful father to his further two children for many years. And yet before that he was mostly absent from his previous children’s lives. Came and went as he pleased, pretty much just came back and got his wife pregnant and then buggered off having numerous affairs.

His younger children who didn’t even know he’d been married before with 6 more children could be just as hurt as the children who had been abandoned by him.

And there’s always a chance that he didn’t even know he had a child. OP said he was 18 and that her mother had just told the authorities that he’d left the country. If he didn’t know, then it might equally be a shock to him to have received a letter from what he perceives to be a random stranger saying that she’s his daughter and that she has a happy life now etc.

Tracing long lost family like this just isn’t black and white. And if OP has had a happy life and is still happy, then she runs the risk of causing herself a lot of unnecessary pain by pursuing this.

It would be perfectly in character for my mother to have kept it secret from him that she was pregnant, she has been an inveterate secret-keeper all her life (not just about my paternity, in many things, she just cannot handle one scintilla of conflict or confrontation).

You're entitled to try to contact them. A parent can't just step away from their responsibilities, if you have children they are entitled to contact you up until the day you die.

@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.

All of this.

You shouldn't, OP.

You said you would not contact your father again, not that you wouldn't contact other members of your family.

I would go for it.

He has two sons but they have clearly not done their DNA (well, not on Ancestry anyway) as they don't appear in my matches. (All the other matches from my father's side are way too distant to be them). So, although I could most likely find them on Facebook or whatever, I am not going to do that.

@HarrietsChariot If he did not know about me, I don't think he could be seen as having any responsibility to me in the 50 years before the letter. It is I think debatable whether he has any responsibility after that.

@Embracelife If she is looking for me I assume she will check back on Ancestry at some point (although she hasn't for years) and I will be right there at the top (or near the top) of her matches.

It would be really interesting if any man came onto this thread to say how they would have reacted (and why) if they had been my father, had not known about me before the letter, had then received the letter.

My bio father's family are a very interesting bunch, his maternal grandmother (and her many sisters) came from somewhere very interesting (a place I had no idea I had connections with) and I have a number of cousins (spread all over the world) from that branch of the family. There are some family stories on Ancestry which are fascinating. I would love to be in contact with them.

But I have no idea how contacting any one of them may impact on them and other members of the family. They may all be incredibly close and it would be a huge bombshell that their cousin had an unknown daughter, that causes pain and upset for people. Or they may have nothing to do with each other, and just find it interesting but not particularly big news. I have no way of telling.

OP, further to my earlier comment, is there a tree author that keeps coming up in your hints? Someone with a large, well-researched tree? This is likely to be the most keen genealogist from that side of the family. They may be very receptive to being in contact with from a discrete, family history interest perspective.

When researching my family tree, I found out that my grandfather had fathered a child in the 1920s before meeting my paternal grandmother. It was a surprise to me, but to my mother it was a shock, as she had known him.

The saddest thing for me is that if I had found out 5 years earlier, my father and his sister could have met. She sounded absolutely lovely, and quite similar to him. Knowing him, he would have been upset that his father had abandoned his daughter, but not surprised. He would have been more interested in getting to know her than anything else.

Of course, everyone will be different. I do hope that another relative gets in touch, if not your aunt. I always hope that one day one of my various adopted cousins will turn up.

@Ubiquery That is an interesting suggestion and I will go back and have a look.

I am sorry I have a contrasting view to many. Whether he knew about you or knows about you is a bit irrelevant to me - he knew of the possibility of you when he slept with your mother. We talk about his rights and his families rights - how about your rights? He clearly didn't help with bringing you up - but you have biological family who you might want to meet before they die.
My mother and father matched with a child on ancestory.com and they realised they had a grandchild. The child was 12 when she took the test - we think someone knew she wasn't her father's biological child and were checking. She's my brother's child - he asked the mother if she was his at one point and she denied it but now we realise she was clearly lying. My brother's viewpoint is that she is a teen and its a terrible time to contact her incase she doesn't realise her father is not her father. And we all agree. But my mother is in her 70s and its one of her wishes to hold her before she goes. So I am hoping when the child is 18 someone will contact her to see if she knows there is a whole load of family wanting her to join us.

@larkle

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

I’ve just had a Google and there’s 16 years between her son and her daughter, so how you’ve come to the assumption she chose to keep her daughter based on that, I don’t bloody know. More likely that she was older, more financially secure.

@Ubiquery There is such a person. In fact his tree is where I got many of the photos and hints I have from the most interesting (ie from an unexpected place) part of the family. He has a huge tree with masses of info.

But he is quite close to me, a first cousin once removed. And probably around the same age as my father, altough he lives in another country, far away. He may have no contact with my father and his close family at all. Or he may talk to them all the time. I can't know if my contacting him would release any cats among any pigeons or not...

ittakes2 sorry but it’s not down to any of the family to contact this child at any point. Any contact needs to come from her if she wants it.

It’s one thing the child contacting the family, there are mixed views on whether this is/isn’t a good idea, but it absolutely is not ok the other way around.

So hopefully when she’s 18 she might contact her family, but I wouldn’t bank on it.

I still think that contacting the wider family is fraught with potential problems. E.g. what happens if they don’t know you exist? Should wider family say agree to DNA testing to prove or disprove the point? Depending on the circumstances the biological father may owe the child something, but the wider family do not.However hard that is.