A family court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a man who sought to reject a parental relationship with his child because his estranged wife was impregnated without his permission using fertilized eggs stored by a clinic.

The focus of the trial was whether a Civil Code provision saying "a child conceived by a wife during marriage shall be presumed to be a child of her husband" should be applied to the latest case, which has drawn attention as a modern-day issue amid an increase of in vitro fertilizations.

The Nara Family Court judged that based on the Civil Code, the 46-year-old foreign man was in a position to be presumed the father based on the relationship with his now ex-wife at the time of her pregnancy.