Legal Question in Family Law in Illinois

Abortion and needing help paying for medical bills

In Early April of 2004 I found out I was pregnant. I did not want to have an abortion, but the father of my child swore to me that he would help me emotionally and financially if I were to have an abortion. He basically lied to me so that I would have the abortion. I had the abortion on April 27, 2004 and soon afterwards I never heard from him again. I am a full-time college student and have extremely high doctors bills. I have asked the father to help me pay for the bills, but I have yet to receive any help from him. He never doubted that he was the father and I have many saved emails in which he accepted and knew that he was the father. Is there anything I could do legally to get exactly what was promised to me, which was for his help with half of my medical bills.

Thank you.


Asked on 8/25/04, 7:02 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Zedrick Braden III Ainsworth & Associates PC

Re: Abortion and needing help paying for medical bills

Hello. I can understand your outrage. Generally,

to be enforceable, the agreement between you and

the father should have been in writing. I see

a great deal of your evidence against him is from

email messages that you and he exchanged. Of

course in any agreement there has to be considera-tion for there to be a binding agreement. Your

biggest challenge may be in proving that he was

the father of your unborn child, now that the

abortion is complete. A DNA test can exclude

paternity, but to this day there is no test, to

my knowledge, which has a 100% rate of accuracy

with regard to paternity. I will be happy to

answer any additional questions that you might

have. There are important steps that you should

consider prior to deciding whether you wish to file a lawsuit.

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Answered on 8/29/04, 1:53 am


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