His Ex-Wife Lied About Terminating A Pregnancy And Hid The Child From Him

If you found out you had a secret child out there in the world that your ex-spouse kept hidden away from you for years, would you want to get to know them, or respect that they're not a part of your life for a reason?

This man in his 50s lives in the United Kingdom. He and his wife have a son who is 16, and he can honestly sit here and say that his life is pretty much perfect. Well, he was happy and carefree up until recently.

"But a while ago, a 26-year-old ghost from my past completely upended my reality. Back in December 1998, my ex-wife, Sarah, and I got married in a small town in the Midwest," he explained.

"The marriage was short-lived and turbulent; by May 1999, I realized it wasn't working and told her I didn't love her anymore. Immediately after, she dropped a bombshell: she was pregnant. Things moved fast and painfully."

"She told me she wanted to terminate the pregnancy. In June 1999, I physically and reluctantly drove her to a clinic a hundred miles away. They refused her appointment on account that I dropped her off without her documentation, and drove off to take my mind off of what she was going to do."

When he came back to pick Sarah up from the clinic, she was livid. They couldn't complete her appointment. One week later, his mom went back with Sarah to follow through with terminating.

Sarah revealed to his mom on the trip that she never wanted to have kids, but Sarah had never once mentioned that major detail to him.

It made him extremely mistrustful of her. A month later, he and Sarah unofficially got separated, and she moved back to her hometown to be with her family.

The following May, their divorce became official. However, while they were separated, he went to see her in January of 2001 to drop off the cat they shared.

olly - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only, not the actual person - pictured above is a man in a suit looking away

He stayed over at Sarah's mom's house, and while he didn't go to her place, there were no signs of a baby at her mom's. He thought she went through with terminating.

In time, he moved to the United Kingdom, met his current wife, and had a baby with her. While he and Sarah parted on the ugliest terms possible, he adored her grandma, who was always a doll to him.

In 2016 or 2017, he looked up Sarah's grandma online to see how she was doing. Sadly, he came across her obituary. She passed away in 2009.

"As I was reading through it, I froze. Listed clearly under the surviving relatives were Sarah...and her son, Leo. Looking further into this unexpected discovery, I managed to find childhood photos of him posted on a relative's old public Facebook thread from around 2015," he added.

"Seeing his face, knowing he is possibly my son, and potentially my son's older sibling, is an indescribable feeling."

He found Facebook comments pointing to Sarah being estranged from her grandma, who wrote about being distraught over not seeing Leo in nine whole months.

He couldn't determine why it was that Sarah and her grandma had a falling out. He then happened across another post where Sarah wrote that she made Leo, along with a picture of him.

So it looks like Sarah never terminated that pregnancy at all, and Leo is the result of that.

"The math is undeniable. A full-term pregnancy from our timeline would mean a birth in early 2000. Leo is now 26-years-old, exactly the age my child would be," he added.

Leo was brought into the world while he was still married to Sarah in a legal sense, and it seems she wouldn't have been able to get pregnant by another man given the timeline.

The law in the state where he and Sarah lived dictates that if a husband and wife get separated and a baby is born, that baby is still considered the dad's child, regardless of whether there is a biological tie or not.

So Leo absolutely is his son, even if he doesn't share DNA with him, which is highly unlikely anyway, given the timing of everything.

"I am feeling an intense mix of emotions. On one hand, if true, it feels incredibly cold, calculating, and cruel that Sarah kept this a secret from my family and me for a quarter of a century," he continued.

"On the other hand, I don't even know how to approach this, or if it is even worth the effort. Leo is a grown man now. He was raised entirely by her side of the family and likely has a heavily skewed version of why his father wasn't in his life."

"I don't want to bring chaos into his world, nor do I want to disrupt the peaceful life I've built with my wife and son here in the UK. For now, I've downloaded my raw DNA data from Ancestry and uploaded it to a few other global databases just to leave the porch light on in case he ever looks for me and wants to find out the truth for sure."

He's not sure if he should try to contact Leo, because he hasn't spoken to Sarah or her loved ones since their divorce, and he has no desire to.

Perhaps Sarah told his mom she didn't want kids to throw them off her trail. What she did was selfish, but if their marriage was going down the drain, she probably thought it would be a cleaner break to not add a kid to the mix.

I'm not condoning that; I'm just trying to understand Sarah's motive for hiding a whole child from him for two entire decades. I do find it weird that he found out about Leo through the obituary a decade ago, but only at the moment is he trying to decide what to do.

It's best to leave Leo alone and not blow up his life. Putting his DNA out there is enough, should Leo ever want to come looking for him, but chances are good that won't happen at his age if he hasn't expressed interest in that already.

What do you think he should do?

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