Care worker becomes millionaire after DNA test proves he’s heir to fortune

It’s like something you’d read in a storybook, minus the whole DNA test aspect: a blue-collar worker in the U.K. struggling with financial difficulties found out that he’s actually the son of a millionaire and an heir to his $63-million estate, all by testing his DNA.

For generations, Charles Rogers and his family had lived in the massive 1,536-acre Penrose Estate in England. After decades of hard drug abuse, Rogers died at age 62 of an overdose in his car in August of last year, and it was thought he had no living heir.

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Enter Jordan Adlard Rogers, a 31-year-old “dirt-poor” British care worker trying hard to pay his bills.

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Adlard Rogers had suspected his wealthy parentage since he was eight years old, when his mother, Julie, claimed to have gotten pregnant following a brief affair with Rogers at age 20.

For years, according to Adlard Rogers, he tried to get in touch with his supposed father and prove his lineage with a DNA test.

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“He offered to do a DNA test when I was younger, but it didn’t happen, and then when I was 18, I knocked on his door and asked if I could have the test, and he told me to do it through the solicitors,” Adlard Rogers explained. “I was 18 so had other priorities at the time.”

In the latter part of 2018, Adlard Rogers tried again to contact Rogers and ask for another DNA test. Instead, he learned that Rogers had died and he was finally able to get the test completed.

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The results were just as his mother told him: the DNA test proved he is, indeed, the son of Rogers. Since the life-changing discovery, Adlard Rogers, his girlfriend and his son have moved into the estate and started spending some of the money.

Along with the sprawling estate, he’s also receiving a US$1,300-per-week trust fund payment.

He also plans to set up a charity to help people in nearby communities who are struggling.

“People say I’m lucky, but I would trade anything to be able to go back and for Charles to know I was his son,” he said to the BBC. “Maybe then he might have taken a different path.”