For three decades, the story of the QC, his former trainee and the love child they battled over has scandalised the inns of court.
Now the feud has taken a new twist, with millionaire lawyer David Cocks trying to cut off maintenance payments for his son, once and for all.
Mr Cocks, who is the sixth-highest earning barrister in Britain, wants to stop paying £10,000 each year for the education of his 31-year-old disabled son, also called David.
(...)
Miss Hammerton, who has struggled to raise their child on incapacity benefit, said: "He is the sixth-richest prosecuting counsel in the land, yet he wants to get out of paying what is only nickels and dimes to him.
(...)
"I want to say to the man who has fathered a human being, who then asked me to abort it, and has only paid me £16.24 a week - that he has lost track of the morality of what it means to be a father," Miss Hammerton added.
(...)
After dinners, weekends away, and a holiday in Wales, Miss Hammerton discovered she was pregnant. She claims that she was then thrown out of his chambers for refusing to have an abortion.
In July 1975 she gave birth to her son in a London hospital while, less than a mile away, Cocks threw a summer champagne party for his chambers.
A year later she launched legal proceedings for maintenance, after the QC appalled his colleagues by trying to deny paternity.
For ten years, her son received just £16.24 a week maintenance, despite Mr Cocks’s flourishing career, while Miss Hammerton worked night and day to make ends meet as a barrister.
(...)
She claimed yesterday outside court that rejection from his father had left her son with deep emotional scars.
David, who has suffered anorexia and depression, has taken refuge in academia - studying to be an archaeologist at a London university.
Now Miss Hammerton hopes to persuade a court that Mr Cocks should continue paying maintenance until their son leaves further education.
She has also presented a 100-page report to the Law Commission arguing that a mother should receive pension rights from the biological father who abandons her.
source.
The whole story makes me sick. First the adultery. Then the suggestion of abortion. Then the abandonment. While the lawyer is swimming in money, his ex-lover is scrimping to pay for the child.
Now the son is 31. Why doesn't have a job by now, I just don't know. You don't get rich by being an archeologist. I anticipate he will be expected to support his mom, but that's not much of a job, unless he's hired to be a professor, and even then it takes time to build up to a secure job.
If I were the son, I'd be inclined to say "f*** 'im", and just earn my own way. I'm not sure I'd want his money.
This is what happens when you act as if sexual activity will never lead to pregnancy. I'm not saying people don't know that-- they just act like it's not true. A very inconvenient fact.
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