But this story differs from the standard Jeremy Kyle fare – because the dad was Apple founder Steve Jobs – and he was worth £158 million at the time.
But despite his wealth, the iPhone creator – whose company went on to become the world's first trillion-dollar firm – refused to pay a penny towards his first child, Lisa, for years.
He falsely claimed that he was sterile and that his ex had been sleeping around. Even when the DNA test came back to say the baby was his he refused to believe it.
This is how the Apple mastermind is portrayed in the 2015 biopic Steve Jobs – but now, seven years after his death, he has once again been exposed as a rotten dad, this time by his own daughter in her memoir, Small Fry.
'He told me I smelled like a toilet'
In an extract of the book published in Vanity Fair, Lisa describes her father as a man who was "not generous with money, or food, or words", despite his £7.8billion net worth at the time of his death.
Even as he lay dying of pancreatic cancer and Lisa came to visit him, Jobs couldn't resist telling his daughter: "You smell like a toilet."
Lisa writes about a day in New York in 1980 when she, aged three, met Jobs for the second time ever.
By this point, Jobs had grudgingly accepted that he really was the dad, after years of falsely claiming that it was impossible.
When the court finally ordered him to cough up, Jobs started paying $500 a month in child support.
That's the equivalent of $1,500 in today's money, but it was nothing for the man who was making millions with Apple.
Before then, Lisa's mum Chrisann Brennan was struggling to get by and had to work two jobs as a waitress and a cleaner.
The unheated flat she lived in was so cold that Lisa used to sleep wearing a coat.
Lisa writes that she had a bizarre encounter with Jobs in that freezing flat, not long after he accepted she was his.
"You know who I am?" the arrogant businessman asked Lisa, introducing himself properly for the first time.
"I'm your father. I'm one of the most important people you will ever know."
Soon after this encounter, Jobs apologised for everything and eventually increased his financial support to $4,000 a month – around $12,000 in today's money.
But even after becoming a regular fixture in Lisa's life, Jobs' relationship with his daughter remained fraught.
'You're not getting anything'
Lisa remembers another conversation she had with her dad when she was seven which illustrated just how stingy the tech genius was.
By then, Lisa and her skint mother had moved house 13 times, sometimes crashing on friends' sofas when they had nowhere else to go.
Her dad would drive over once a month to visit in a convertible Porsche, and Lisa remembers asking him whether she would inherit his car one day, when he was done with it.
Jobs was furious. "You're not getting anything," he snarled. "You understand? Nothing. You're getting nothing."
The truth in the Steve Jobs film
Lisa's portrayal of her father will sound familiar to fans of the Steve Jobs film.
In it, the Apple guru, played by Michael Fassbender, clashes constantly with his daughter and often threatens to withdraw the small amount of maintenance money he pays her mother.
But when his widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, found out about this less than positive portrait of him, she begged famous actors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, to steer clear of the project.
Jobs' old Apple colleagues also refused to assist director Danny Boyle with the film in any way.
But many aspects of it – including Jobs' denial that Lisa is his daughter and Jobs claiming his Lisa computer was never named after her – are accurate.
The fight for Jobs' legacy
Tech geeks around the world – along with Jobs' second wife and his friends from Apple – have elevated his achievements to god-like levels.
But Lisa's unflattering memoir reveals the anger of a neglected daughter who is still furious that her father is still held in such high esteem despite the way he treated his family.
Her mother Chrisann, a painter, wrote her own memoir back in 2009 where she described Jobs as "cruel" and said it was "like pulling teeth" whenever she had to get more money out of him for Lisa's upbringing.
Chrisann and Steve met when they were 17, both hippies studying at the same high school.
She fell pregnant at 18, and they both agreed she should have an abortion, although they continued an on-off relationship for four more years after that.
But when she fell pregnant again in 1978, Chrisann kept the baby – and the relationship ended forever.
Lisa, now 40, writes that Jobs was there when she was born on a commune in Oregon, although he was still denying at the time that she was even his.
Jobs helped to choose Lisa's name and then left, but deep down the mathematician must have known that Lisa's black hair and prominent nose – features the two shared – couldn't be down to chance.
Bono exposed his Lisa lies
At the time, Jobs' energy was focused on another Lisa – the early Apple computer he named, which would eventually evolve into a Macintosh.
As Lisa grew up, she reassured herself that the name of Jobs' prototype computer was proof that her cold dad really cared about her despite his snappy temper and critical outbursts.
By the time Lisa was in high school, Lisa was splitting her time between both her parents' houses.
“Hey, you know that computer, the Lisa? Was it named after me?" she asked one day.
But his response was "clipped" and "dismissive."
“Nope," he simply said. “Sorry, kid.” It seemed like the real apple of his eye was, well… Apple.
Lisa was 27 when Jobs finally admitted that he named his creation with her in mind.
The pair were on holiday in the South of France, where Jobs met up with his friend Bono, who put him on the spot and asked where the name came from.
Lisa writes: "Of course it was named after me, I thought then. His lie seemed preposterous now."
Jobs loosened up as Lisa got older. To make up for his earlier stinginess, he bought her a $400,000 house and two cars.
But it was his second wife, and the three children he had with her, who the bulk of Jobs' money went to after he died.
Business executive Laurene Powell Jobs, 54, and her children are now estimated to be worth £16.8 billion, while Lisa received an undisclosed settlement in his will which is thought to run to multiple millions of dollars.
Jobs' life may be over, but the tug-of-war over his memory will likely continue for as long as people use iPhones.
And for all his skills as an inventor and businessman, it's clear that the Apple founder is far from the perfect dad.
"For a long time, I hoped that if I played the beloved daughter, he would be the indulgent father," Lisa writes.
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