Fraudulent Fertilisation

The judge said, “Yes, Doc­tor Al­le­gri, you wished to speak?”

“No, doc­tor, I sim­ply want­ed to say that we offer the op­pos­ing party the chance to speak first. I feel that our po­si­tion has been out­lined very pre­cise­ly in the law­suit doc­u­ment. Doc­tor Burán knows our de­mands, it’s for him to ex­press his opin­ion about them. As far as we know, up until now he hasn’t ac­knowl­edged his son.”

Doc­tor Bis­son ad­dressed Rober­to and asked him, “Doc­tor Burán, you’ve heard Doc­tor Al­le­gri’s pro­pos­al, have you got any­thing to say? It would be im­por­tant for you to ex­press your opin­ion. I’d like to di­rect this hear­ing from the be­gin­ning, that way every­thing will be much eas­i­er. Is that all right?”

“Ex­cuse me, your ho­n­our,” said Rober­to, “I’d like to make it clear that I’m ac­com­pa­nied in this hear­ing by Doc­tor Rocío Bareilles. She’s a spe­cial­ist in fam­i­ly law... With the aim of being co­her­ent and avoid­ing any use­less ju­ris­dic­tion­al waste, I’d like her to rep­re­sent me from now on in this hear­ing.”

“That seems ac­cept­able,” said Doc­tor Bis­son, “in any case we’ve brought the par­ties to­geth­er to try and reach a con­cil­ia­to­ry agree­ment... For the court, not only is your pres­ence fun­da­men­tal, but also your ef­fec­tive in­ter­ven­tion. That with­out af­fect­ing your right to be rep­re­sent­ed. Well, we’re lis­ten­ing, Doc­tor Bareilles...”

Rocío was wear­ing an el­e­gant dress; she had tem­porar­i­ly aban­doned the in­for­mal style she liked. She want­ed to ful­fil her role as Rober­to’s de­fence with­out giv­ing any ad­van­tage. First im­pres­sions could be de­ci­sive. With­out get­ting up out of her seat, she said, “Your ho­n­our, we do not ap­prove of the opin­ion of the dis­tin­guished lawyer for the plain­tiff. It’s not true that their sum­mons re­veals their pos­ture, at least not in re­la­tion to this hear­ing. Said doc­u­ment sim­ply at­trib­ut­es de­viant be­hav­iour and the pa­ter­ni­ty of a child to my client, but of­fers no clue to the out­line of a pos­si­ble con­cil­i­a­tion. It sim­ply re­quests the con­vo­ca­tion of the par­ties, but does not say what so­lu­tions they offer. We are there­fore ready to hear pro­pos­als. It’s rea­son­able to be­lieve that Ms Juana Ar­ti­gas has them... Oth­er­wise she would not have re­quest­ed this meet­ing. It seems log­i­cal for us to sup­pose this.”

Al­le­gri was per­turbed. He could carry on in the same line, but he thought it would be mis­tak­en; so he agreed to speak be­fore his ad­ver­saries in the trial.

“All right, al­though we don’t agree with what Doc­tor Burán’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive says, we’ll begin. Both the judge and the mi­nors ad­vi­sor have a lot of work, we’ll get straight to the point... Our ap­proach is very sim­ple: the facts are stat­ed with total clar­i­ty in the law­suit. In the first place, we think it would be use­ful to know whether Doc­tor Burán is pre­pared to ac­knowl­edge his pa­ter­ni­ty. That would pre­vent us ex­pound­ing on sub­jects that are per­haps not dis­put­ed. This is the main thing, every­thing else comes in ad­di­tion. Will you an­swer, Doc­tor Bareilles?”

“Right, Doc­tor Al­le­gri,” said Rocío, “I see you give pri­or­i­ty to the fil­i­a­tion analy­sis and want to know if my client ac­cepts that he is the fa­ther. But, could we hear first why you are in­ter­est­ed in the pa­ter­ni­ty of Doc­tor Burán? Is it to as­sure Juana Ar­ti­gas the ad­min­is­tra­tion of a large child sup­port quota? So that the child has the right to in­her­it from my client? We think it’s im­por­tant first to hear an an­swer to these queries. Would that be pos­si­ble, your ho­n­our?”

The judge was a lit­tle sur­prised; the hear­ing was leav­ing the ha­bit­u­al rails. There seemed to be some­thing hid­den, things were being looked at from too many an­gles. But as she was in­ter­est­ed in find­ing out the truth, she thought it best to allow the par­ties to main­tain a di­alec­ti­cal game.

“Doc­tor Al­le­gri, could you tell the court what is the in­ter­est that Ms Ar­ti­gas is es­sen­tial­ly pur­su­ing?”

“But, your ho­n­our! said Juana’s lawyer, “this hear­ing is tak­ing on an in­quisi­to­r­i­al as­pect! We’re not here to be in­ter­ro­gat­ed! The in­ter­est of my party is ev­i­dent: Ms Ar­ti­gas is an hon­est per­son, but fun­da­men­tal­ly a moth­er. She wants recog­ni­tion of the rights the law grants her son. I don’t ap­prove of the ap­proach being given to this meet­ing; we are not the ones at fault, we’re claim­ing a right. We would like Doc­tor Burán, who seems to be so wor­ried about our in­ter­ests, to speak... Let him tell us whether or not he is the fa­ther of the child borne by my manda­tor. Are we ask­ing to much, your ho­n­our?”

“What do you say, Doc­tor Bareilles?” said the judge.

“The court will be in­formed in due course,” an­swered Rocío, “but I must point out that Doc­tor Al­le­gri still hasn’t an­swered the ques­tion he’s been asked. It’s of basic im­por­tance to my client to know what re­sult Ms Ar­ti­gas is pur­su­ing.”

Doc­tor Bis­son seemed an­noyed. Rais­ing her tone of voice slight­ly, she said, “Es­teemed doc­tors, from now on, I will con­duct the hear­ing. I won’t ac­cept in­ter­rup­tions or lob­by­ing. I will con­sid­er si­lence as a re­fusal to sub­ject your­selves to con­cil­i­a­tion. If there is any ob­jec­tion to reach­ing a spe­cif­ic agree­ment, I ask you to ap­proach me with it right now; I do not wish to waste any more time if the in­ten­tion is not con­cil­ia­to­ry. Doc­tor Bareilles, Doc­tor Al­le­gri’s ex­pla­na­tion is suf­fi­cient an­swer for me, al­though he does not give de­tails. It should be un­der­stood that Doc­tor Al­le­gri de­mands main­te­nance and cus­tody of the minor, all as a con­se­quence of your fil­ial ac­knowl­edge­ment, am I right?”

“Ab­solute­ly,” said Juani­ta’s lawyer, ex­hibit­ing an iron­ic smile.

Rocío re­mained im­pas­sive, ob­vi­ous­ly her po­si­tion was mis­un­der­stood; the judge was in­ca­pable of imag­in­ing every­thing that the sim­ple aim of Juana Ar­ti­gas en­closed.

“All right,” she said re­signed­ly, “I will sum up our po­si­tion re­gard­ing this trial for the court and the In­ca­pac­i­ty Trust. We do not deny my client’s pa­ter­ni­ty, nor do we con­firm it...”

The smile was wiped from Al­le­gri’s face and the ad­vi­sor asked, “Ex­cuse me, doc­tor, should we take it that your client has doubts re­gard­ing his pa­ter­ni­ty?”

“That’s right,” said Rocío, “but there’s more... Doc­tor Burán, I’d like you to ex­plain briefly to the court what hap­pened.”