These 18 People Discovered Scandalous Family Secrets After Taking A DNA Test, And It's Messy To Say The Least
Discovering you have a sibling you never knew existed or that you're actually adopted is the stuff of movies — but what if it happened in real life? Reddit user u/VideoFork asked, "People who have taken an ancestry DNA test and accidentally uncovered a family secret, what was it?" And boy, did these 18 people have a lot to say.
Note: Some of these posts have been edited for length and clarity.
1."My son is my fourth cousin."
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"We adopted him as an infant from an agency. Fun to find that we are actually related!"
— iawegian
2."Found out that my brother is only my half-brother."
"Our parents were never married, but my mom has insisted my whole life that my dad is my brother's dad. He never acknowledged my brother — claiming that the man my mom was living with at the time was probably his father. My mom has always said the other fellow was simply her roommate."
3."I was adopted and always knew I was adopted. My parents told me that I came from a family that lived several towns over, and I was a surprise. When the tests came back, I found out I had a first cousin. I emailed them, started comparing notes, and wham! First, my biological mom was single. Second, I was not a late addition. I had four sisters and one brother. I was the baby, but only by a couple of years. Third, most all of them lived nearby."
"Finally, nobody knew I was alive! My biological mom had passed. She had kept the pregnancy secret from everybody else. Before she died, she confided in one of my biological sisters that she had a baby a long time ago, and she had put the baby up for adoption. She told nobody else. When my sister told the rest of the family they didn't believe her! So when I finally looked them up, she was like, 'See! All those years! I told you so! We have a baby brother!' It was an amazing experience."
4."I found out that my dad is not my biological father."
"Turns out my dad is the family friend I grew up calling ‘grandpa.' And he was also my mom’s bariatric surgeon."
5."My aunt discovered that her mother cheated on her father and she was a product of that affair, meaning she was actually only half-siblings with her four siblings."
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"The rub was that my aunt’s husband was married before he married her. The woman he was married to is the daughter of the man involved in the affair. So no one knew this, but my uncle got divorced and then married his ex-wife’s half-sister. I guess he has a type."
6."That my father is a registered sex offender."
7."That my grandmother was biracial. She was abandoned shortly after birth at a church by an older white lady, adopted by a white farmer with 11 kids, and stopped talking to most of that family due to nondescript unpleasantness as an older teen. She died 20 years before I was born and looks like Maya Rudolph in the few photos I’ve seen, but insisted she was part-Sicilian."
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"Anyway, my mom got me a DNA test a few years ago. My grandmother was definitely half-Black, and I have no Sicilian or Italian DNA. I’ve connected with a few distant cousins over email and Zoom, am waiting for the pandemic to mostly end to talk to my dad about it and introduce him to more family."
8."I found a half sister that none of my siblings or mother knew about. My dad had an affair 50 years ago and is dead now. For us, it wasn't really a surprise, we already have a half-sister from another affair, but for the newly discovered one it answered a lot of questions and gave my mom some much needed closure. We all met a few times, it was pleasant."
9."My male cousin did one and found a female cousin we did not know about. He reached out to her and apparently our deceased uncle was good friends with her mother. Mom wanted a baby so uncle got her pregnant simply as a sperm donor. Female cousin lived a few blocks away from my grandmother. She had met her a few times going around selling Girl Scout cookies or something. My grandmother had no idea that she was buying cookies from her granddaughter."
10."Found out I have a different father. My dad also took a DNA test at the same time and found out his father of 52 years was not his biological father either. As it turns out, I come from a line of bastards."
11."My wife is adopted, but found her biological mom and did one of the genetic tests. Someone matched with her and asked if she knew such and such a name. She found out her dad wasn't her biological dad, but he was actually her mom's boss."
12."I found out about my real father and three half siblings. It ended up being a really good discovery."
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13."A friend discovered that her father was not really her father. Her mom had an affair and she was the result. It tore her family apart. Her father did not know he was not really her father."
14."I did the health DNA one 18 months ago because I wanted to see if I had the breast cancer gene, as there are several incidences on both sides of my family. Got my results and became very confused because it claimed I had no Italian despite my father's grandma literally coming over from Sicily in 1920. It took me a few minutes to realize what that actually meant. My parents have been together since my mother was 14, I was born when she was 17, and my father joined the military and married my mother. I called my mom and she literally said, 'That's interesting' and then she asked me not to talk to my father about it."
"My sister ended up doing a DNA test and it showed that we were half siblings."
15."A few years ago my wife and I both took the 23 and Me test. One of her matches came back with 23%, which is high for someone non-family. She messaged him and they started talking. He was about 10 years older, said he was adopted, and the only thing he knew was some basic biological info. Because of his age, that would have meant her mom was about 14 when she had him, but her mom never said anything about it. She asked her youngest uncle and he said when he was a kid he remembered his sister going away for a few months because she was 'sick' and the family just pretended it never happened. So my wife now has a brother."
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16."I took a DNA test and found I am ethnically 25% Ashkenazi Jew. After eight months of serious digging, I found out my grandpa is not my father’s biological father."
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17."I found out I had a full 100% older brother."
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"My mother got pregnant by my father before they were married, which was scandalous in 1960. So, mom left town and lived with my aunt until the birth. She gave the baby up for adoption and then returned home. A couple of years later, she married my dad and had three more children together, including me. Fifty five years later, after both my parents had died, my aunt let it slip that me and my siblings were not the only children of our parents. My sister took a DNA test, and soon thereafter, we met our new big brother and his family and have become quite close."
— Freeagnt
18."My grandma found out her two sisters are actually only half sisters."
"After some snooping she comes to find out that her real dad was the guy who owned the corner store where her mom worked growing up."
