In an ironic coda to a case billed as the men's Roe v. Wade, a judge has ordered the disgruntled dad who challenged Michigan's child-support law to pay $1,225 in attorney's fees to the mother of the child he does not want to support.

The award of fees is equivalent to more than two months of support for the child Matthew Dubay fathered with Lauren Wells after she allegedly told him she was infertile. Dubay filed his would-be “men's rights” test case to stop the state from enforcing a $475-a-month child-support order against him.

The suit, which named Wells as a defendant, argued that if Roe gives a woman the right to terminate a pregnancy, a man should have the right to "choose not to be a father."

But U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson dismissed the case as frivolous in July, allowing Wells, the Saginaw County prosecuting attorney, and the state attorney general to move for attorney's fees.

“Ms. Wells is a single mother supporting her child ... who has been forced to sustain the substantial cost and emotional distress incurred in defending against Plaintiff’s frivolous action,” Wells said in her motion.

To limit his exposure to attorney's fees, Dubay had agreed with the defendants in June to dismiss Wells from the case. But Lawson rejected the agreement, saying she was a necessary party to the action.

In the attorney's fees order, the judge also awarded $4,896 to Saginaw County and $4,450 to the state, leaving Dubay on the hook for a grand total of $10,571. Wells' attorney is L. William Smith of Gilbert, Smith & Borrello in Saginaw.

Dubay has appealed the dismissal of the case. But the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Michigan, affirmed in N.E. v. Hedges, 391 F.3d 832 (2004), that a similar case was frivolous and that attorney fees were warranted.