Former star of ABC’s The Bachelor, Clayton Echard, has had a well-documented and dramatic on-again, off-again relationship with eventual season 26 winner Susie Evans. However, the relationship fell apart over issues of infidelity. Now there’s a pregnancy scandal. Is the baby Echard’s? Let’s find out.
At the end of season 26, Clayton famously told all three finalists that he was in love with them. Susie left and he told Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia that he was in love with everyone, then he decided he loved Susie the most and broke up with Gabby and Rachel at the same time, breaking their hearts again.
He made it to September of 2022 before he and Susie broke up.
What are the Clayton Echard paternity rumors?
There have been no public romances for Clayton since the breakup, although he was rumored to be dating Rachel earlier this year. This TikTok didn’t help to quell any of those rumors:
Fast-forward to September 18. The Sun reported that a woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, is claiming she had a one-night stand with Clayton that resulted in a pregnancy – with twins.
The woman is a 33-year-old podcast host from Scottsdale, Arizona. She filed a lawsuit in family court in Arizona to force Clayton to take a paternity test. She’s due in February of next year.
The woman — who is not Susie — has reportedly tried to get Clayton to agree to a test several times but he keeps refusing. The woman apparently filed a motion with the court to seal the case, but that has yet to happen.
“The Respondent (Clayton) makes knowingly false allegations against the Petitioner (Clayton’s ex-fling) in his Response to the Petition to Establish Paternity that would be detrimental to the Petitioner’s reputation,” the woman wrote in court documents.
The woman said she asked Clayton to take a test “more than 50 times in writing.” It was going to happen at one point and the woman even paid the $725 deposit but Clayton was still unwilling to participate, per the court docs.
Clayton sent an email in July that said the woman was “faking.” The woman sent Clayton and The Sun photos of herself to prove the pregnancy, but Clayton said she simply looked “bloated.” Who knew Clayton could tell if women were pregnant just by looking at them?
The couple met doing a real estate finance deal, and she said she knew “nothing about him.”
Here’s how she described the May 20 encounter:
“I hadn’t been with anyone since March of 2022 after being raped and violently assaulted and was not on birth control. I spent the night at Clayton’s apartment, then looked at the houses with him the following morning. Afterwards, he took me aside and said he wasn’t ready for anything serious because The Bachelor had really destroyed his mental health.”
Clayton denied any sexual activity with the woman to The Sun.
“My response is in the court documents. I’m not giving it the time of day because it’s baseless. We did not have sexual intercourse.”
He requested a “court-ordered paternity test” and that the woman pay the costs for it. He also asked for attorney’s fees because he said the case is “groundless and lacking in merit.”
The test is reportedly taking place on September 26. The two haven’t seen each other since June 17, when Clayton “purchased a pregnancy test and asked Petitioner to urinate in front of him to confirm the pregnancy,” court docs said. The test, documents said, was positive.
The woman alleges that he said “If it ends up being my child, I have decided that either you’ll take 100% custody of the child, or it will be put up for adoption. I will not be raising it in any capacity.”
He got quite vitriolic in subsequent messages: “My hatred will only grow if you decide to put me through all of this. … My personal hell would be having to have you be a part of my life.”
She responded in court docs that:
“He has come up with bizarre scenarios where he has claimed that I only wanted to explore a relationship with him because I wasn’t actually pregnant, but wanted to get pregnant with his child during that time, even though I had been very clear that I had no expectations of having sex with him if we did.”
The woman also sent a letter to police saying that she endured “Threats, intimidation, verbal abuse, endangerment and extortion from Clayton Echard.”
Clayton said he intends to sue the woman for “emotional damage and fraud” after the paternity test case is resolved.
This brings us back to Susie Evans. The two have been split since September of last year and do not have any children together.
