If your sperm is stolen, are you liable for child support?

Factual Questions
1

Assume that a sperm sample is collected from someone without their knowledge or consent, and someone is impregnated with it. Is the father legally liable for the child with regards to child support and such things?

I’m asking for US law, but other answers are welcome.

2

IANAL, but men who donate sperm to sperm banks are not required to pay child support, and I don’t see why any other “pregnancy-by-sample” would be any different.

3

Anything done with a stolen body part has no bearing on the victim of theft (sperm, ova, kidneys, limbs) any more than you are liable for damage caused when a thief seals then crashes your car.

Voluntary sperm donations are the same if made using artificial means, although there are some places where the child has the right to know their biological father (kind of like adoption). Sperm donations made the old-fashioned way might end up causing problems as here in Australia, where a man had sex with his ex-wife to impregnate her and was forced to be financially responsible despite the fact that it was intended to be a donation. (Can’t find a cite but I’m sure I haven’t imagined it.)

4
      • Yes but the reason is because in the agreement both parties sign, the sperm bank states that they have no responsibility to ever disclose the donor and recipient to each other. So the woman cannot detirmine the man who donated. She cannot file for child support against the genetic father if she does not know who he is.
  • Amazingly, in the US there are a number of ways a woman can go to court and have any man declared the “father” of her child (with attendant legal and financial responsibilities) and none of them have anything to do with genetic testing.
    ~
5

In one word yes, with the exception where the sperm was stolen after being donated to a sperm bank.

For example see State of Louisiana v. Frisard, 694 So. 2d 1032 (La. Ct. App. 1997) where the father met a nurse(the mother) in a hospital while visiting a sick relative. The nurse offered oral sex and the man accepted and wore a condom. After the act the mother took the condom to dispose of it. Unknown to the father the mother then used a syringe and impregnated herself with the semen in the condom. The court ordered the father to pay child support as he volutarily had sex and deposited his sperm with the mother.

In several cases the courts have ordered the father to pay child support even when he has been raped.

Check out this quote from State ex rel. Hermesmann v. Seyer , 252 Kan. 646, 847 P.2d 1273, 1279 (1993), where a 12 year old is ordered to pay child support after being statutory raped by his 16 year old baby sitter.

http://www.nas.com/c4m/rape_case.html

Then there is S.F. v. Alabama ex rel. T.M., 695 So. 2d 1186 (Ala. Civ. App. 1996). Here the man was raped and the woman bragged to friends that

The court concluded that the “rape” of the father could not preclude a finding of liability for support.

To read more about these cases and others see the law review article It’s Ten O’Clock: Do You Know Where Your Sperm Are? http://www.supportguidelines.com/articles/art199903.html

For further reading check This Salon article at http://dir.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/10/19/mens_choice/index.html?pn=1

Of course the reasoning behind this cases is that child support is for the minor child–who is an innocent victim of their parents’ conduct.