Step brother and sister to marry over child

A brother and sister who had a child together are to break the law and marry later this month.

They first spoke to the newspaper in May about their shock on discovering that they shared a father and were involved in an incestuous relationship, Daily Mail reported.

And even though the couple – known as ‘James’ and ‘Maura’ – realise it is illegal for them to marry, they say they are still determined to spend the rest of their lives together and will break the law to do so.

James and Maura met and fell in love completely unaware that they shared a father. They have since had a child together.

James said: "We have applied to get married and there are no mistakes in the paperwork so we will be able to wed at the end of this month.

"We were aiming for Christmas but we have decided to do it sooner. I don’t know whether our father will come or whether any of our parents will be there.

The couple, who hailed from different towns, about 100 miles apart, were both out with friends when they met in a nightclub in a third town several years ago.

Two years later, Maura became pregnant and the couple moved in together. Later that year their son, Mark, was born. By then James’s fraught relationship with his mother, Carmel, was nearing breaking point.

He had not seen Vincent – the man he had been brought up to call ‘father’ – for several years. Vincent, with whom James had a strained relationship, had left the family home when James was aged about 10 or 11.

In the years that followed that separation, James’s relationship with his mother deteriorated.

Maura, who had enjoyed a happy family background, encouraged James to make peace with his estranged mother and he called to her house just before last Christmas.

But, as his mother questioned James about his partner’s background, she became agitated and cut short the meeting, saying she could no longer speak to him. Mystified, James left the house.

A few days later, she made contact with the devastating news that Maura’s father was also his own father.

Since Christmas, with the help of DNA tests and gentle questioning, James and Maura have discovered the following: On a night out in the Eighties, Carmel, then aged 19, met Tom, and the pair dated for four or five  weeks before going their separate ways.

However, after discovering she was pregnant with James, Carmel opted not to tell Tom she was expecting his child.

By the time James was born, she was in a relationship with Vincent, and it was he who she named as James’s father on the baby’s birth certificate. It was not until about four years later that Tom discovered Carmel had had a child.

Keen to find out whether he was the boy’s father, he made contact. Many of the details about what happened next are sketchy. However, what is clear is that even though Tom was by now married and the father of a daughter, he was determined to be a part of his son’s life and embarked on a legal battle to win access.

However, it was the eighties and court cases like this were few and far between. But Tom was undeterred and, when the case was heard behind closed doors, Carmel admitted that Tom was indeed James’s biological father.  However, the court ruled that James should not be told who his real father was, and that

Tom should not be given access to the young boy. Now, even though James and Maura are half-brother and sister, they are determined to get married. They say they have no qualms about breaking the law after James’s biological father was denied access to him.

James said: "The way I see it, if the system can know about things and hide the facts, then I can do the same. They turned a blind eye and so can we. People can criticise and say it is not right but they should say the same about what was done to me in the family law courts."

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