True.
I think so, too. And if I was Elise, I’d tell him no, although I might relent over time, if he - and I - proved able to behave ourselves. (That is, if he didn’t hound me or write me love letters or try to contact anyone in my family before I’m ready.)
Obviously, the well-fare of the child comes first, but I don’t think that makes the decision in this situation as clear as some people might think. First of all, that they had a fight bad enough to drive her into that situation, that she chose infidelity and, at least at the time, chose not to tell him about it, potentially underlies some serious issues with the relationship long term.
I don’t think infidelity is something that can feasibly be held under wraps forever either. What happens if the kid grows up and has some very distinguishing feature of Chris. Hell, chances are that Geoff himself at least thought about the idea that the potential conception may have happened during that fight, and if anything comes up that would hint that it might be true, it will quickly become an issue.
IMO, they should talk about it. If they really are that close, then he should be able to express his concern and they can reach a mutual decision. Testing may or may not be reasonable, but it may also not be necessary. For instance, he can still be a part of the child’s life in much the same way that close friends of many families who aren’t related are thought of as aunts or uncles. He can still help support the child by being a good role model, offering to babysit, and otherwise having a relationship with the child. The idea that he has to contribute money, particularly if it is probably unnecessary and will only complicate the issue is silly.
The important part is that the child is taken care of, regardless of whose child it is, and that he can, and should, be in the child’s life and support the child regardless of whether he is the child’s father or not. And, even if they decide not to tell Geoff, if they think there’s any sort of chance at all that Chris is the father, they can tell him when he’s older, and he can decide for himself if he wants a test or not.
Bear in mind that the question isn’t Should Chris try to make contact with or pay support for a child he definitely knows to be his. The question is *Should Chris try to find out whether a potential love child is his.
Except that a year has passed since the one-nighter, and Elise and Geoff have been through counseling. Chris doesn’t know what they discussed during that interval, and I’m not convinced he has the right to ask.
I don’t think the people who said he should contribute money (or put it aside) were saying that it is only ethical obligation if the child were proven to be his. But trying to be a part of the child’s life would be disastrous, I think.
And though I used the present tense in the OP, I rather think that Chris and Elise’s are former best friends, at this point. If she loves her husband, she’d be a fool to be in Chris’s company again; and the dearth of communication during her pregnancy may indicate that she realizes that she and Chris destroyed the friendship when they got drunk and pantsless together.
he is in a tough spot.
He can’t make things worse for Elsie. So he has to keep quiet.
But he needs to privately let her know that he recognizes his responsibility and if needed he will help. He shouldn’t visit the family much if at all…
To what purpose? If he’s not going to get involved in the child’s life any further, regardless of the outcome of the test, then there’s really no reason to shake things up even to the extent of trying to find a way to test for paternity without Geoff’s knowledge.
And since he’s got no business getting involved in the kid’s life for the reasons amply stated by other posters upthread, there’s no reason for him to try to find out if he managed to donate the swimmer that got this kid started.
I remain unconvinced that it is better for the kid to remain in a.“stable” situation that could potentially blow up horribly and end with his ‘dad’ (Geoff) never wanting to see him again if he finds out the kid isn’t his. If Geoff and Elise split up now, the kid might be raised with non-cohabitating parents, but he also won’t be raised with that sword of damocles hanging over his head until the day he comes home from biology class wondering why he has a cleft chin or something.
The kid or Geoff somehow finding out (if the kid is in fact Chris’s) seems like a far bigger risk than a genetic disease.
Chris should probably at least talk to Elise and find out if Geoff knows she cheated, how likely it is that junior is his, and what the consequences of him becoming involved would be. Elise doesn’t just get to decide to risk her kid’s future well being because it is easier for her.
From the wife’s perspective, I would lie to the one night stand if he came calling. Oh noes, it’s a lie and all that, but sometimes it is better to lie.
The kid’s dad is the man who helps raise him, not the man who contributes sperm.
You might have a point if Chris knew the situation between Elise and Geoff to be unstable or undesirable: if the marriage were on the rocks because Geoff used her as a punching bag, for instance. But there’s nothing in the OP to indicate that, and it seems unlikely.
If ifs and buts were candies & nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.
It’s impossible for Chris to make the guaranteed best decision here, because he doesn’t have enough information, and the very act of trying to obtain more information is apt to destabilize the situation. For Elise’s marriage to remain stable, it’s surely best for her to cut Chris out of her life, as she clearly seems to be doing. Trying to establish paternity is going to rile things up with no certainty or even probability of accomplishing anything good.
And, as someone else has already observed, the child is probably legally Geoff’s offspring anyway. Elise & Geoff never divorced; there’s no indication that they even separated, though there’s enough wiggle room to say that they may have. Geoff was married to Elise when she conceived, carry, and bore her child; legally he’s presumed to be the dad.
Elise doesn’t “get” to risk her kid’s future; she is responsible for her child’s well-being in a way no one else is. I think Chris has to surrender to her judgment absent strong evidence that she’s making the wrong choice.
As I wrote upthread, if Chris loves her he won’t come calling. Trying to establish sounds like the stand-up guy thing to do, but in fact it’s selfish.
Oh yeah, the kid’s going to be thrilled to pieces if he ever finds out he was inadvertently the cause of his parents’ breakup.
Chris should keep his damn mouth shut and butt the hell out. If Elise wants him to know ever then she’ll come to him. This is the classic Schrodinger’s box, as Skald implies - trying to find out more information changes the situation immediately. Let it be.
Perspective: I kind of vaguely suspected I was adopted, never in the forefront of my mind, but some things triggered all the same. But all of the clues that stuck out to me won’t even be present here. The kid will be with his parents from the start, so they’ll be baby pictures, mom and dad remember the first word, how much baby weighed, little things like that. No one ever needs to find out if Chris is the father - and that is a big if. We don’t even know that it is.
But if Geoff finds out and declines to raise him further, the kid is left with no dad at all. Not everyone will react well to finding out their kid isn’t theirs genetically. I see the truth coming out now as being preferable to the potential risk of it coming out when the kid is old enough to be hurt by it. In my mind, Elise is risking her child’s emotions and future relationship with his father (whoever you consider that to be) for her convenience now.
If Geoff finds that the child isn’t his. That’s assuming two facts not in evidence:
Neither of those is certain, and the fact that Geoff is raising the child as his own seems to indicate that he had sex with Elise around the likely time of conception anyway. The only way for Chris to determine that the child is his is to grab Elise and the kid’s heads and stick them into nest of hornets.
I think the answer to this question is so plain I don’t understand the discussion. Chris should butt the hell out. Especially if he loves Elise as much as he says he does. But that also gives us this hypothetical’s BIG PROBLEM:
If Chris is so moral that he realized at 14 that pursuing Elise is wrong, then there’s no way he has an affair with you when they’re both adults. No way, no how.
I think we can all agree that at 14, if a pretty girl even hints at the possibility of physical contact, what her parents think is not going to factor into it.
I think you misunderstood. Elise is the one who didn’t want to get involved because she knew Chris wanted to be a Marine. There’s nothing in the OP that says her mother’s opinion was ever an issue, or even that she’s pretty. (Her father’s opinion was obviously not an issue.)
At least, that’s what she said. Women sometimes tell polite fictions in such matters to spare the feelings of men they love but don’t wish to fuck.
Actually I’ve flat-out lied to a woman to spare her feelings on such an issue. But I’m a utilitarian.
Whereas guys always just say “YOU’RE BUTT UGLY NEENER NEENER NEENER”. 
If the baby is not Geoff’s and Geoff finds out, can’t we cross that bridge when we get to it? Must we open up the whole can of worms right now?
Bith the Shuffle, have you ever actually spoken with women? The idea that women are usually unfaithful in order to get outside genetic material for their offspring is laughable. Sure, it has happened occasionally, but it is not the usual situation. Women have affairs for a wide variety of reasons, but it’s rarely to slip a cuckoo’s egg into the nest. It may come as a shock to you, but women are generally not considering conception while they have sex (especially in an affair), or, if they are, it’s how to avoid conception. Biological imperatives really don’t enter into it, just as they generally aren’t the driving factor for men having affairs. It may surprise you that men don’t have affairs in order to spread their precious seed to as many nubile receptacles as possible, but seriously, in the real world of middle class western culture, they don’t. Social imperatives weigh far more heavily on us than bio-imperatives do, and social imperatives vary with the society in question. In contemporary, middle class western society, number of children isn’t a status symbol. Evolutionary psychology is a very comfortable belief system for people who don’t really get social relationships, and for people who want to rationalize behaving in ways that, at least in our current society, are considered undesirable. But it’s a lousy guide to actual human behavior.
Skald, I absolutely agree with you. Chris needs to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open, so that in the hopefully unlikely event that for any reason Geoff ends up out of the picture, he can step in to help Elise if she wants help. If he’s that fond of Elise, he should want to help her if something happens to Geoff regardless of whether or not he is the bio-father of the child. Elise has made it clear whom she considers the father of her child. If Chris discovers he has some genetic disorder that could have been passed on to the child, he should inform Elise, and leave it at that. It may be hard luck on Chris, but that’s the way the cookies crumbles sometimes.
This is one of those unfortunate situations where things are going to be less than ideal for someone, and since the only thing that is not in question is the maternity of the child, the mother gets to choose on behalf of that child. She may decide to tell the child when it’s grown up, or she may not. Her choice, on behalf of what is unquestionably her child. It’s not entirely fair, but it’s the best solution I can see. Certainly threatening a marriage on the iffy basis that maybe someday the child or Geoff might find out and might be upset is not a good idea.
That’s not clear from the OP at all. But I still stand by my main assertion, everyone in the OP is too damn moral for this to have happened in the first place.
Of course it was clear that Elise’s father’s opinion wasn’t an issue. Her father was dead and thus unlikely to speak to anyone without evoking screams and crying and people reaching for their axes.
Anyway, what I wrote was that the OP doesn’t ascribe any role to Elise’s mother in Elise’s not dating Chris at all. It simply says
Maybe I could be have been clearer, but to me the antecdent of the bolded she is clearly Elise.
And, as I said, girls give excuses why they want to keep a given guy in the friend zone all the time.
As for the morality issue, I don’t see where you’re getting that at all. And even if the pointwere valid, “moral” people do immoral things all the time, particularly when under stress and under the influence.
I think there is a lot of space between what people know, and what people let themselves know. In most cases of infidelity, I think people on some level know that something is going on. But every single one of us has parts of our life where we suspend disbelief for the sake of a greater goal. And keeping a family together is one hell of a greater goal. It’s not uncommon at all for couples to keep up a bit of polite fiction to keep a marriage together. They may not even be able to fully articulate that that is what they are doing, but it happens none the less.
It’s not for an outsider to question or meddle with the terms that people have consciously or unconsciously accepted in their marriage.
Although the OP didn’t happen to a friend of mine but the thread title did, my answer is “as soon as she can find the time to go up there to get his blood to test it”. 
No blood necessary for a DNA test, just a cheek swab of baby and potential dad.
If he’s that curious, Chris could babysit the kid one day and sneak the kid to a lab… I understand there are even home DNA tests being sold. But to what end? The best thing he could do would be to butt out completely and leave the family alone. IMHO.