Bachelor alum Clayton Echard sets the record straight.
On Thursday, the 30-year-old reality star released a screenshot of a paternity test receipt to clarify the situation after being cited in a paternity lawsuit by an unidentified woman in August.
In the lawsuit, the woman alleged that Echard became pregnant after the two met for a one-night stand. Since filing the lawsuit, the woman has been asking Echard to take a test to find out the paternity of her unborn twins before she gives birth in February. The 33-year-old woman, who chose to remain anonymous, recently claimed that the former Bachelor was not complying with her demands for a test.
“This is the timeline. The truth will always set you free,” Echard wrote via email with receipt in a post on his Instagram Story. According to his screenshot, the TV personality paid $725 to schedule an appointment at a paternity clinic.
“I will take my portion of the test on September 27,” he wrote in an email, adding that the woman would provide her sample on October 2. “The results will then take about a week to come back. I believe we are all on the same page now.”
PEOPLE has reached out to Echard’s representatives for comment.
Clayton Echard’s Instagram story.
clayton echard/Instagram
On Monday, Echard denied claims he had a “sexual relationship” with the woman in an interview with Sun. The woman reportedly told the outlet that he refused to take the test and she had to pay a $725 deposit to do so, but Echard called her allegations “baseless” and “without merit.”
In court documents obtained by PEOPLE, the woman said Echard refused to believe she was pregnant when she initially informed him back in June.
“I wanted you to come to me to confirm what I suspected. And you confirmed that. So I don’t see you as a liar anymore,” he allegedly told the unidentified woman.
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After the two parties take a paternity test, they are scheduled for an early settlement conference and will appear in court promptly on September 28th.
Echard’s alleged paternity scandal comes nearly a year after he and Susie Evans announced their decision to split. The former couple met on his season The Bachelor and lived together for less than a year before going long distance and eventually breaking up.
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Susie Evans and Clayton Echard. Craig Sjodin/abc Clayton Echard says he’s focusing on himself after Susie Evans split: ‘I’m not mentally healed’
“With incredibly heavy hearts, we wanted to share that we have decided to go our separate ways,” Echard and Evans wrote in a joint Instagram statement at the time. “For anyone who has ever loved, this was a painful decision and not taken lightly.”
“We understand there will probably be a lot of questions about this decision – social media is definitely a highlight and we’ve kept most of our experiences together private as I’m sure most can understand. But we will share this – even though this past year together has brought us so much joy and so much laughter, there was also a significant amount of pain,” they continued. “We know that no healthy relationship comes without difficulties, but we realized that we were unprepared for the external forces that were interfering with our ability to heal not only as individuals, but as a couple.”
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The former couple said they will be “focused on continuing to work on ourselves, so we can be the best version of ourselves” in the future.
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