I really dont know what to make of this. In some ways I have a lot of sympathy for them. In others I'm finding it difficult to understand how they can want to continue to be together knowing they are half-siblings.

Due to Irish law, there's every chance this is somehow legal cause of the incorrect father's name on the blokes birth cert.

If not, them and their witnesses are getting themselves in for serious legal shit and feck knows what possible medical horrors the kid has in its future - although they shouldn't be too bad with only one side shared.

Incest! Why go across the road when you can go across the hall?

tenebear said :

Tough one.
Can the gays argue against a love that religion and law dont understand. Can i pass judgement on something that seems unnatural to me, when there are two consenting adults and a loving family involved.
I feel i cant. I feel that it would make me a hypocrite to usethose words to suit me and deprive someone else of them.
I dont understand it, I dont think i'd ever feel the way they do. But I wont judge them either

I know what you mean. It's very difficult to criticise and yet ever so difficult to say that I support the legalisation of incest. i mean I could easily point to the health consequences and say that it is against public policy to allow such unions but I think such an argument would only be a smoke screen for the fact that I am morally against it. It really is a tough one.

Well, I think it would be careless of them to have any further kids together knowing there's a sizeable risk involved... However, I think they should totally get married - why he heck not?!! Once they don't make too big a deal and keep their connection secret, they shouldn't have any trouble - even the state has better things to do than worry about someone exploiting a legal loophole...

Dueling banjos springs to mind...

Isnt there science behind their attraction. I remember reading a similar story in america a couple of years ago where a full a brother and sister were adopted separately and met up years later not knowing they were related and fell madly in love. So they went to find out their respective histories before getting married and planning kids and realized they were siblings. Scientists said that their DNA literally recognized each other as their own and that helped formed the intense attraction or something like that

It sound's like the 'complex court case' decided that the man who married Jim's mum was the best person to be the male parent, and that Tom had the lesser case as he had been away for four years. The decision probably followed the pattern of choice by the courts at the time, in line with social mores. The names on the birth cert may have had a bearing on the court decision, as a sign of parenthood acceptance, along with the care and support given to Jim and his mum by the man. 

I'm taking a leap in the dark from here on, but if the man who accepted Jim as his son decided to sort out Jim's legitimancy in law (before or after the complex court case) by actually taking him to be his son, then I'd say the proposed marriage between Jim and Maura would be legally OK. The actual 'complex court case' decision could be regarded as backing up any such undertaking, in that it chose to give father's rights to that man, not Tom. The DNA factor may be judged irrelevant. However, If the legitimancy factor was NOT sorted out legally, then it seem's probable that Jim and Maura's proposed marriage could be legally suspect, on the face of the facts available.

In any case, given the mores applicable now, and if Jim ans maura are a happy couple together, and their child is brought up in a happy supportive household, then the best to them.

Can the gays[we] argue against a love that religion and law dont understand. Can i pass judgement on something that seems unnatural to me, when there are two consenting adults and a loving family involved.
I feel i cant. I feel that it would make me a hypocrite to usethose words to suit me and deprive someone else of them.
I dont understand it, I dont think i'd ever feel the way they do. But I wont judge them either

They say their attraction was so strong that within just one week of meeting they felt that they had known each other for a lifetime and within two years their son, Mark, was born.

"Uncle daddy why have I six fingers" Sicko's!