Woman showed her real marriage certificate at the hospital — only to be told her husband allegedly used a fake one for IVF with another woman
It started when Zhu discovered that her husband was taking an unusual amount of fertility supplements over an extended period of time
A woman in eastern China has been going through a tumultuous hardship ever since she visited the Zhongshan Hospital in Shanghai after seeing some suspicious texts on her husband’s phone. She had always thought that the marriage certificate she had with him was the only one they had. But when she visited the hospital, an inspection revealed that her husband had, in fact, forged the marriage certificate to have babies via IVF with another woman. The wife, named Zhu, is now fighting back with a lawsuit, according to an August 2, 2026 report by CityNewsService.
Suspicious texts unleash a horrifying tale
It was the summer of 2025 when Zhu, a resident of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, first came to know that her husband was taking male fertility supplements for an extended period. In November of that year, she spotted text messages from Zhongshan Hospital on his phone that suggested that he had undergone some reproductive treatment with another woman. Upon confrontation, he admitted to having an affair with this woman.
But it wasn’t the end of the story. Her husband wasn’t involved in just another extramarital affair, but was running a whole reproduction operation. The following day, when Zhu visited the hospital with a lawyer, the staff confused her with another woman. Turned out that her husband had forged their marriage certificate to create surviving embryos with his mistress.
A fight for the destruction
Zhu sued her husband, the hospital, and the Shanghai healthcare services, demanding the destruction of the embryos, 100,000 yuan (US$14,706) as emotional damage compensation, and a public apology from the mistress. After investigation, police detained Zhu’s husband and his mistress from May 11 to May 16. But while the hospital agreed to stop and seal the embryos, they insisted that they didn’t have the authority to destroy them. Shanghai’s Health Commission also reiterated this by saying that the hospital had checked the marriage certificate and didn’t find any violation of rules.
Shanghai family lawyer Li Ningwei also affirmed the same thing. According to her, forging a marriage certificate might come under a legal offense; China’s law doesn’t clearly hold a frozen embryo as illegal. Whether or not these embryos are destroyed depends solely on the decision of the biological providers of the sperm and the egg. Besides, as the hospital said, the implantation of the embryos is irreversible.
Probability of illicit babies
Zhu’s scenario is painful and something that many women endure. According to the statistics shared by Child Trends Research Brief, almost one in 10 men have children with multiple partners, and an estimated 5% experience multiple-partner fertility by age 25. Bearing in mind that China performs over one million IVF procedures, producing 300,000 babies annually, as a study in Human Reproduction found, the probability of illicit embryos seems far worse, also given that China’s population has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, with only about one birth per woman.
Meanwhile, Zhu’s husband filed a divorce lawsuit on the same day (August 11) as the embryo case hearing in Wuxi. He did not appear in person and was only represented by a lawyer. The hospital also asserted that its procedures are compliant and do not bear any liability for what she believes to be illegal or felonious.
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