A LECTURER has won damages after claiming his wife deceived him into thinking he was the father of their son born following IVF treatment.

The man, who has family links to Bolton, said that without his knowledge, the child was created with the use of sperm provided by her former boyfriend.

The man, aged in his 60s, was awarded about £40,000 by a judge.

The woman said there was ''no merit'' in the damages claim.

Sitting at Central London County Court last week, Judge Deborah Taylor said the man and woman should be referred to as ''X'' and ''Y'' to protect the identity of the boy.

Judge Taylor heard that the couple married in 2002 before travelling to a clinic in Barcelona two years later for fertility treatment where the man gave a sperm sample.

Barrister Thomas Brudenell, who represented the man, said a few months later the woman returned to the clinic — instead with a former boyfriend, where she was impregnated with his sperm.

The boy was born in late 2005 and when he was around six months old the couple separated. They divorced in 2008.

Mr Brudenell said the man looked after the child when his businesswoman wife was working and paid more than £80,000 in maintenance.

In 2011, a dispute arose over the amount of contact he was having with the youngster — and the woman then told him that he was not the ''biological father'', which was confirmed by a DNA test.

The woman said she had never told the man he was the father and that her ex-husband knew ''from the very first day'' that she had been to the clinic with her ex-boyfriend.

Mr Brudenell told the judge that they had drawn up an agreement under which he would not have the ''normal'' financial responsibility for any child and it had “upset” the woman.

“He didn't want to go back to the Spanish clinic,'' she said. ''The only reason I took my ex-boyfriend was because my ex-husband gave me that document to sign.”