Default Daddyhood

Reason ^ | January 12, 2009 | r. balko

[FormerACLUmember]

Another wrongful-paternity case from hell:

When Walter Sharpe received the certified letter on Feb. 6, 2001, he knew the complaint for child support was a mistake.

Andre Sharpe had a different date of birth, a different Social Security number and different previous addresses.

Andre Sharpe also had an 11-year-old daughter with a woman in Harrisburg, and Walter Sharpe knew he had been to Harrisburg only once, to register a car. He also knew he hadn't fathered a child to a woman named Terri Jones on that trip.

So he ignored it.

Big mistake.

A court entered a default judgment against Sharpe, and for the next six years, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania hounded the former trash collector to collect child support for the girl. He lost his job, paid more than $12,000 in support and fines, became estranged from his family (he has four kids of his own), and was jailed four times for failing to make payments. The county denied his repeated requests for a DNA paternity test (and were backed up by the courts), arguing that its domestic relations officials had sufficiently confirmed paternity "after reasonable investigation."

Walter Sharpe's attorney alleges that when he appeared in person with personal information proving he couldn't be the father, county officials merely changed the biographical information on the custody forms to match Walter Sharpe's.

After looking into Sharpe's story, the Patriot-News newspaper was able to determine the child's real father, Andrew Sharpe, in less than an hour. That's because the girl has been living with him for the last four years. The girl's grandmother (who had custody for a time) says the real father has supported the girl the entire time. The article isn't clear on where Walter Sharpe's support payments have gone.

In May 2007, a judge finally ruled that Walter Sharpe isn't the girl's father. But last October the same judge refused to reimburse Walter Sharpe for any of his past payments, much less all the damage done to him by the mistake. The county's arguments are incredible:

In court papers, the office stated it repeatedly advised Walter Sharpe to file a "petition to disestablish paternity" and he failed to do so for three years, so he is at fault.

It still claims he can't prove he is not the father because there are no DNA tests to show that, despite the fact the agency repeatedly opposed his requests for DNA testing.

"Furthermore, [the Department of Public Welfare] has experienced grave injustice as a result of [Walter Sharpe's] failure to address this matter in a timely fashion," a joint answer filed by Domestic Relations and the state Department of Public Welfare states.

The agency claims that because of Walter Sharpe's delay in challenging paternity, it is unable to recoup support payments from the real father.

"As a result of [Walter Sharpe's] delayed actions in this matter, DPW is forced to suffer unfair and irreversible injury."

I don't know if the office is correct about Sharpe failing to file a petition to disestablish paternity, but the court papers do seem to show the office really has no idea what's going on with the girl, given that she has been getting support her biological father all along, including him actually raising her for a good portion of her life. Meanwhile, Sharpe's own kids not only weren't getting the money Sharpe was spending on wrongful payments and legal fees, the mess made it fairly difficult for him to be an actual father for them, too.

[FormerACLUmember]

Welfare reform laws require mothers to name a father in order to get benefits. State bureaucracies then hound whomever the woman names for child support. The problem is that there's little incentive for the agencies to get paternity right.

[Fichori]

Someone needs to finger Zero.

[YCTHouston]

Amazing story of bureaucratic lunacy. Also makes you wonder if the actual parents allowed this fraud to go on because the free checks were too hard to pass up.

[familyop]

"The problem is that there's little incentive for the agencies to get paternity right."

Try to get it right, and their will eventually be a whole lot of VIP DNA prints stored.

[Lizavetta]

Someone needs to finger Zero.

Care to rephrase that?

[FormerACLUmember]

LOL

[FormerACLUmember]

Also makes you wonder if the actual parents allowed this fraud to go on because the free checks were too hard to pass up.

Possibly, but there is no accounting by the vermin at Family Court where all the stolen money actually went. Might have gone easily to a bogus account of one of the Family Court employees, who are usually ACORN-type sociopathic street people with politically connected jobs.

[cavador]

They(the real parents)should have been jailed for FRAUD.

[Fichori]

“Care to rephrase that?”

Sure.

Some mother needs to say Zerobama is the daddy so she can get welfare.

[freekitty]

This sounds like a scam to me. The Department or some of it’s employees are probably involved. Don’t know the judge would rule the way he did unless he is just plain nuts.

[Myrddin]

It gets worse. California gives the child support agencies full access to driver's license records. The people doing the investigations aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. I received a child support certified letter in 2002. The LA child support "staff" had used the driver's license records to compose a fictitious "person" with my name and driver's license number, residence records from some other person and heaven knows what else. They called the HR department at my employer to try to get their hands on my income. It took weeks of phone calls and faxes to prove I wasn't the "daddy". It helped that the "daddy" was black and I'm white. My "ace in the hole" was having had cancer in 1985, I was incapable of being the "bio dad" to either of the "offspring". I had never been in the city where the "offspring" live either. What an expensive and annoying mess. It didn't help that I had just received a layoff notice the very same day. When it rains, it pours.

[Myrddin]

The real kicker was that the "agency" people used only the first and last name when doing the research. Had they included a middle name, I would never have been bothered. Totally incompetent. A first and last name in my case might yield thousands of hits in California alone. It makes me wonder if they had access to income information, thus were searching for a high income person that was too busy to pay attention to the scam they were attempting. Perhaps being laid off the same day was a blessing.

[FormerACLUmember]

This sounds like a scam to me. The Department or some of it’s employees are probably involved. Don’t know the judge would rule the way he did unless he is just plain nuts.

It is certainly a giant scam. The crooked "judge" is fairly typical for what you encounter in Family Court: interested only in covering up the blatant criminality of his fellow Family Court employees.

Justice for dads is non-existent in the Family Courts of the US.

[verklaring]

These are the same people who will soon be running your health care, your business and your retirement accounts.

[FormerACLUmember]

The LA child support "staff" had used the driver's license records to compose a fictitious "person" with my name and driver's license number, residence records from some other person and heaven knows what else. They called the HR department at my employer to try to get their hands on my income. It took weeks of phone calls and faxes to prove I wasn't the "daddy". It helped that the "daddy" was black and I'm white. My "ace in the hole" was having had cancer in 1985, I was incapable of being the "bio dad" to either of the "offspring". I had never been in the city where the "offspring" live either. What an expensive and annoying mess. It didn't help that I had just received a layoff notice the very same day. When it rains, it pours

Thanks for sharing your experience, which appears fairly common in the Peoples Republic of California. I hope you are in good health and employed.

[FormerACLUmember]

These are the same people who will soon be running your health care, your business and your retirement accounts.

Bingo!

And the same people regulating and "auditing" Bernie Madoff are now doing the same with the trillion+ dollar bailouts.

[Quix]

Maybe some bureaucrats need his reimbursement taken out of their 401K’s.

[verklaring]

.. trillion+ dollar bailouts.

and who audits them "we wonders, oh yes we wonders"... Gollum

[porter_knorr]

Justice for moms with true deadbeats equally non-existent.

I have zero sympathy for someone who ignores a court order.

[agere_contra]

I have zero sympathy for someone who ignores a court order.

The law can do no wrong, huh?

This was robbery and extortion under color of law. In a sane country this guy should have expected the case to be (at the very least) dismissed out-of-hand.