Bizarre Child Support Battle In Brooklyn

New York -WABC, July 25, 2005) — A child support battle that involves a hospital and a $9 million - it may sound like a soap opera plot but this real life drama is playing out in Brooklyn. The bizarre battle involves a fertility clinic at NYU.

Eyewitness News reporter Michelle Charlesworth is live on Manhattan's east side with the story.

This is a question for men tonight: what happens to sperm in a bank when you stop paying to keep it frozen? Can your estranged wife pick up the freezing bills and use your sperm, then come after you for child support payments? That is at the center of this lawsuit against a sperm bank a wife and a notary public.

This couple is currently getting divorced but before the relationship hit the rocks they were trying to have kids. According to court documents, Mr. Deon Francois' sperm was frozen at NYU. Then the break up happened - about two-and-a-half years ago. Mrs. Francois continued to pay $500 a year to keep the sperm frozen and underwent in vitro.

Mr. Francois says he didn't know about any of this, in fact, he didn't know that she was still trying to get pregnant. He thought that if nobody was paying to freeze the sperm, it would be thrown away and it was a non-issue. --