Posted on 01/03/2008 12:35:10 PM PST by paltz
"All’s fair in love, war, and paternity cases. When child support is sought, there is scarcely any deceit that courts won’t push aside under the “best interests of the child” test.
"Courts have ruled that boys who were statutorily raped by older women must pay child support. Courts have ruled that when a woman has taken the semen from a condom a man used for sex with a different woman and has inserted it in herself, the man must still pay child support. Courts have ruled that when a woman has concealed her pregnancy (denying the man the right to be a father) and then sued for child support a decade later, the man must still pay child support. Courts have ruled that when a woman has deceived her husband into believing that her baby is his child, he must still pay child support. Few if any men are relieved of child support obligations due to the circumstances of the pregnancy, no matter how bizarre or unjust."
A good new ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. From the Associated Press' Sperm donor wins Pa. appeal to not pay child support (1/3/08):
"A woman who promised a sperm donor he would not have to pay child support cannot renege on the deal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled (pictured).
"The 3-2 decision overturns lower court rulings under which Joel L. McKiernan had been paying up to $1,500 a month to support twin boys born in August 1994 to Ivonne V. Ferguson, his former girlfriend and co-worker...
"Ferguson and McKiernan met while working together at Pennsylvania Blue Shield in Harrisburg and had a sexual relationship that had waned before Ferguson persuaded him to donate sperm for her. Courts found that the two agreed McKiernan would not have to pay child support and would not have visitation rights, but Ferguson later changed her mind and sued. Ferguson's lawyer has disputed that the agreement existed in the first place, but courts have agreed with McKiernan on that issue.
"Between the time of the donation and when Ferguson sought support in 1999, McKiernan moved to Pittsburgh, got married and had a child.
"A county judge called Ferguson's actions despicable but said it was in the twins' best interests that McKiernan be required to support them. In addition to monthly payments, McKiernan also was ordered to come up with $66,000 in back support..."
Thanks to Judge Rufus Peckham, a reader, for the story.
Any man who honors a female friend’s request to be her sperm donor has got a serious case of gneiss on the brain. Or maybe schist.
Mr. McKiernan agreed to father children with Ms. Ferguson, his “former girlfriend and co-worker.“ Even if she had told him that she would not ask for child support, her foolish promise is not binding on the twin boys he fathered.
My ex-wife got the brand-new house that I bought as a single man before the marriage! It was “for the children” of course, but only one was mine, her other two were from a previous marriage. Family court is so slanted towards the female, it’s not even funny!
Fortunately, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court doesn't agree ...
Does he get a refund for the 14 years he did pay for?
Yes, but, it's more accurately stated this way "Family courts punish the responsible and reward the irresponsible."
Any man who impregnates a female in a consensual act outside of marriage, should not be liable for child support.
Well thanks for coming right out of the gate with that.
This same story was on another thread somewhere and my very first thought...what kind of idiot was that guy?
Although I suppose it’s a good court ruling on some level, the notion that some fellow would fall for this scam just boggles.
Lookit, if the gal needed a sperm donor and she wasn’t too awful particular, she could have went down to the local bar and found a willing guy. But no, this girl wanted THIS particular guy to “donate” sperm. First, they had been dating. Well sure, doggone it, I’ll leave you a life long memory of myself, no problem. And you promise not to bother me with it down the road?
I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell this fool.
So far as I’m concerned...HE needs to have a brain transplant.
Parents...tell your sons. Don’t ever fall for THIS line.
Or else we don’t need the institution of marriage.
And why do you make that outrageous assertion?
Family court, child support, custody, abuse charges, he said / she said! Pah. In the old days everybody got along or else. Or else SSS!
In a sane society, he would not be liable because he was not her husband.
I got one for you. A fellow I knew got divorced and his wife got custody even though she was living with an illegal alien only 19 years old. She then moved to out of state and had a child by the illegal alien. The judge then ruled that the father must INCREASE his child support because the illegal alien skipped town!
Then you tell me why else the state should sponsor the institution of marriage, perhaps for sentimental reasons?
All good reasons to keep sex within marriage.
i would say that sometimes (in this case and in other cases where men choose bad, immoral women to be their wives and mothers of their children) the courts punish the irresponsible (men) and reward the irresponsible (women)...
Well it’s nice to meet you and if I had all the time in the world I’d debate you.
But if your premise is that only FEMALES should pay for children conceived out of wedlock, well that ends the argument right there.
I suppose, on some level, you’re making a point about the importance of marriage and the need of a child for two parents of the opposite sex, I’d agree with you.
but based on any premise that the fellow should be out making babies with no responsibility....I’m sure you know that debates goes nowhere.
Again, nice to meet you.
This is the common law, and was the law of all fifty states until the Supreme Court (in the same term as Roe v. Wade) overturned those laws and awarded child support to bastards, subverting twenty centuries of marriage law and custom.
The marriage "contract" was a contract, on the part of the male, to acknowledge all children born during the marriage as his legal issue, and to be responsible for their care and support.
Lacking such a contract, a woman had to be out of her mind to bear a child with no means to support it.
This wise accomodation to human nature served us every well, and the Supreme Court was foolish to remove it, as the results since then amply demonstrate.
That's not the point.
The common law of marriage binds a married man to support all children who issue from is wife's body, whether or not they are his. The same common law recognizes that unmarried women who engage in baby-making activity are doing so at their own risk, and that the law cannot rely on their inherently untrustworthy statements about who is the father.
The results since the USSC imposed child support for bastards amply demonstrate the foolishness of that position.
Marraige is, and should be, a committment.
An impulsive act of sexual gratification, well, isn't.
Any woman who fraudulently traps a man into child support commits fraud. It's that simple.
Justice demands that--no matter what the circumstances--the courts refuse to uphold and be complicit in fraud, which is prima facie an obvious injustice.
Obscuring the injustice behind the "it's in the best interest of the child" platitude adds to and augments the injusted perpetrated.
Obviously a woman who fraudulently misleads a man into believing that he is the father of her child(ren) commits fraud. When the man discovers the fraud, he is entitled to the return of all child support payments, fraudulently extorted from him, with interest, and to punative damages. If the biological father of the child(ren) knew of the fraud, and was therefore complicit, the defrauded man is entitle to return of all child support payments and punative damages from him.
Read the dissenting Justice’s opinion. As much as a despise the way that women often work the system in order to punish men, The dissenting opinion makes much more sense from a conservative perspective than does the majority opinion.
DISSENTING OPINION
MR. JUSTICE EAKIN DECIDED: December 27, 2007
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion appellee can bargain away her children’s right to support from their father merely because he fathered the children
through a clinical sperm donation. The majority concludes this is possible because the parties intended “to preserve all of the trappings of a conventional sperm donation …
[and] negotiated an agreement outside the context of a romantic relationship ….” Majority Slip Op., at 17. To this, I say, “So what?” The only difference between this case and any other is the means by which these two parents conceived the twin boys who now look for support. Referring to Joel McKiernan as “Sperm Donor” does not change his status — he is their father.
It is those children whose rights we address, not the rights of the parents. Do these children, unlike any other, lack the fundamental ability to look to both parents for support? If the answer is no, and the law changes as my colleagues hold, it must be for a reason of monumental significance. Is the means by which these parents contracted to accomplish conception enough to overcome that right? I think not. The paramount concern in child support proceedings is the best interest of the child. Sutliff v. Sutliff, 528 A.2d 1318, 1322 (Pa. 1987). Parents are permitted to enter child support agreements where they negotiate, bargain, and ultimately establish valid child support payments. See generally Knorr v. Knorr, 588 A.2d 503, 504-05 (Pa. 1991). While “[p]arties to a divorce action may bargain between themselves and structure their agreement as best serves their interests,” id., at 505 (citing Brown v. Hall, 435 A.2d 859 (Pa. 1981)), the ability of parents to bargain child support is restricted:
[Parents] have no power … to bargain away the rights of their children …. They cannot in that process set a standard that will leave their children short. Their bargain may be eminently fair, give all that the children might require and be enforceable because it is fair. When it gives less than required or less than can be given to provide for the best interest of the children, it falls under the jurisdiction of the court’s wide and necessary powers to provide for that best interest. Id. (internal citations omitted).
I agree, as did the Superior Court, with the trial court’s fundamental recognition that “it is the interest of the children we hold most dear.” Ferguson v. McKiernan, 855
A.2d 121, 124 (Pa. Super. 2004) (quoting Trial Court opinion, 12/31/02, at 9). This Court possesses “wide and necessary powers to provide for [a child’s] best interest.”
Knorr, at 505. “[P]arents have a duty to support their minor children even if it causes them some hardship.” Sutliff, at 1322 (citation omitted).
The majority, with little citation to authority, relies on policy notions outside the record, such as “the evolving role played by alternative reproductive technologies in contemporary American society,” Majority Slip Op., at 14, and hypothetical scenarios concerning reproductive choices of individuals. Id., at 14-15. These musings are thought-provoking, but are ultimately inapplicable to this case of enforceability of a private contract ostensibly negating a child’s right to support — a contract our jurisprudence has long ago held to be unenforceable. This case has little or nothing to do with anonymous sperm clinics and reproductive technology.
Speculating about an anonymous donor’s reluctance is irrelevant — there is no anonymity here and never has been. There was no effort at all to insulate the identity of the father — he was a named party to the contract! This is not a case of a sperm clinic where donors have their identity concealed. The only difference between this case and any other conception is the intervention of hardware between one identifiable would-be parent and the other.
The majority also references the Uniform Parentage Act (UPA). Our legislature has not adopted the UPA. This Court has held, “it is not the role of the judiciary to legislate changes in the law which our legislature has declined to adopt.” Benson ex rel. Patterson v. Patterson, 830 A.2d 966, 967 (Pa. 2003) (quoting Garney v. Estate of Hain, 653 A.2d 21 (Pa. Super. 1995)). The “legislature … has taken an active role in developing the domestic relations law of Pennsylvania,” id., at 968, and because it has not adopted the UPA, this Court should not consider it; the subject matter is within that body’s purview. If anything, the failure to enact it speaks of rejection of its principles,
not acceptance of them.
Indeed, it is not our place to legislate, yet the refusal to recognize a traditional and just right to support because of “evolving” notions (which are not directly applicable to the facts) is surely legislation from the Court. To deny these children their right to support from their father changes long-standing law — if the legislature wishes to disenfranchise children whose conception utilizes clinical procedures, it may pass such a law, but we should not. The legislature can best undertake consideration of all the
policy and personal ramifications of “evolving” notions and “alternative reproductive technologies in contemporary American society.” Majority Slip Op., at 14.
While conception is accomplished in ways our forbearers
could never have imagined, and will in the future be accomplished in ways we cannot now imagine, that simply is not the issue with a private contract between these identifiable parents. We do not have anonymity — we have a private contract between parents who utilized a clinical setting to accomplish those private aims, the creation of a child. The issue is not anyone’s ability or future reluctance to utilize anonymous sperm banks — the issue is
the right of these two boys to support, and whether there are compelling reasons to remove that right from them. The children point and say, “That is our father. He should
support us.” What are we to reply? “No! He made a contract to conceive you through a clinic, so your father need not support you.” I find this unreasonable at best.
This private contract involves traditional support principles not abrogated by the means chosen by the parents to inseminate the mother, and I would apply the wellsettled
precedent that the best interest of the children controls. A parent cannot bargain away the children’s right to support. These children have a right to support from both parents, including the man who is not an anonymous sperm donor, but their father. I would affirm the Superior Court, as the agreement here is against the public policy and thus unenforceable.
Justice in the family court system is an accident.
I did marry a woman with a son from a previous marriage. This stepson has been a great blessing for all these years. And now I get to enjoy my granddaughters.
bump for read after work.
A friend of mine was hit for 18 years of CS by a judge in Idaho. He had seperated from his wife 5 years previous and had no ccontact with her during this time. She had gone to court in Idaho to get their divorce finalized so she could marry her new man.
The problem was she was pregnant on the court date and against the pleading of the woman, her attorney, and his attorney that he was not the father, and with the real father present and identified during the hearing, the judge felt that it was in the best interest of the child that my friend pay...and pay he did...
Should "her foolish promise" be binding upon an anonymous sperm donor whose semen is acquired through a clinic? If so, how is that situation any different, from the child's viewpoint?
The cited circumstances allow the woman to know and evaluate prior to insemination the characteristics of the sperm donor. Wouldn't that be an advantage to the woman? Why would you want to take that benefit away from her?
Questions, questions.
I completely disagree, from a conservative standpoint, the government is intruding where they have no business, the two made a deal and signed a contract and neither party has the right to change the contract after the fact...
Actually, I do not agree with the the ethics of the “anonymous sperm donor.” Children deserve to have a mother and a father and to know who those persons are.
It then follows that the children deserve a decent home so:
How do you control another's actions....
When you can figure out how to control other's actions to make them always do what's right then you won't need any of these stupid laws and stupid court cases....
Until then, the kids get to blame mommy for being stupid instead of daddy having to pay 1/2 his income because mommy changed her mind...
I don't want to sound like an insensitive ba$$tard, but enough is enough already!!
What would you do for couples where the man is infertile? Would you deny them the ability to have a child by artificial insemination?
You can only negotiate what you have a right to negotiate. You cannot negotiate away the brooklyn bridge if you don’t actually own it.
Let me ask what you would do? Would you advise the married woman to go to bars and pick up men to be “inseminated?” Now, you might say that ArtSem is done with a plastic appliance rather than a penis and that makes it somehow morally OK.
Does it really?
I would advise childless couple to adopt as the moral and ethical thing to do.
That is not easy to do these days - unless one is willing to go the foreign, third world route, which is expensive - due to the "shortage" of babies/children available for adoption.
But your position is consistant; I'll give you that.
Correction , good reason to keep your little rascal in your pants & even better reason not to have faith in the legal systems fairness/honesty/integrity.
bump
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