Posted on 01/09/2006 12:19:01 AM PST by RWR8189
A former Broward County man has been ordered to continue to pay child support for a child he did not father. He said his wife cheated on him; she denies it.
Richard Parker said he never suspected that his wife had been cheating on him when she got pregnant seven years ago.
When the Hollywood couple divorced in 2001, he agreed to pay her $1,200 a month in child support.
But less than two years later, when his son was 5, he says he learned the awful truth: The boy he had raised as his own wasn't his.
Parker sued his ex-wife, Margaret Parker, claiming fraud. He wanted to terminate his child-support payments and recover the money he had paid out. His court battle, so far unsuccessful, raises delicate questions about fatherhood and men's rights in an age in which it has become relatively simple to prove -- or disprove -- paternity.
For the most part, courts say the bonds of matrimony trump biology.
A Broward County judge dismissed Richard Parker's claim of fraud in January 2004, and an appeals court in November upheld the decision, effectively ending his quest for return of the child support he had paid to his ex-wife. Moreover, Parker must continue to pay $1,200 a month in support.
The court said Richard Parker should have questioned the blood line sooner -- within a year of the divorce -- if he had any doubts.
''It could have been over, and I could have been in control of my money,'' the 55-year-old dental implant salesman said of the dismissal, an outcome that didn't surprise him.
Margaret Parker, 41, insists that she never deceived her husband. She said they had trouble conceiving, so she had sex with a ''mutually agreed upon individual'' in order to get pregnant.
''He is the fraud,'' she said, describing her ex-husband as a louse, eager to dodge his responsibility.
Richard Parker, who now lives in Boston, said he didn't question his son's paternity until someone else suggested that there wasn't much of a resemblance.
''When kids are all really little, they all look the same,'' said Parker, a man of Irish and Italian ancestry. He said that both he and his son have dark hair, and that the boy has dark eyes shaped like his mother's.
But when his child was 5, his girlfriend's 90-year-old grandmother looked at a photo his father was carrying and told him that the child was certainly not his.
Parker confirmed the elderly woman's hunch with a DNA test he saw advertised on a billboard.
In June of that year, he sued his ex-wife.
In a petition before Broward Circuit Judge Renee Goldenberg, he said Margaret Parker intentionally misled him to believe that he was the father, and he asked the court to make his ex-wife pay him damages to compensate for past and future child-support obligations.
Goldenberg rejected his claim without wading into the issue of whether Richard Parker had been deceived. In late November, an appeals court upheld the decision.
`A TIME LIMIT'
Time was not on Richard Parker's side, said Joanna L. Grossman, a professor at Hofstra Law School in Hempstead, N.Y.
''The law provides a remedy for fraud, but imposes a time limit for raising the claim,'' Grossman wrote in an e-mail. ``Since his wife made the representation about the child's paternity during the divorce action, that proceeding was the appropriate time for him to raise any concerns he might have had.''
His lawyer, Scott A. Lazar, questioned the fairness of such a time limit, considering, as he alleges, that Parker was duped into believing he was the father.
''No one's going to tell you they are having an affair,'' Lazar said.
But Margaret Parker said she wasn't having an affair.
She said her ex-husband was infertile, a claim he called a ''a total lie,'' adding that, in fact, he has impregnated women in the past.
As part of her ruling, Judge Carole Y. Taylor of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach acknowledged that Richard Parker might feel victimized by the court's ruling. But she said the child's needs are paramount.
She said that the father's appeal could trigger ``psychological devastation that the child will undoubtedly experience from losing the only father he or she has ever known.''
Moreover, Taylor noted, cheating is hardly rare. Quoting from a law article written by Temple Law Professor Theresa Glennon, the appeals judge wrote:
``While some individuals are innocent victims of deceptive partners, adults are aware of the high incidence of infidelity and only they, not the children, are able to act to ensure that the biological ties they may deem essential are present. . . . The law should discourage adults from treating children they have parented as expendable when their adult relationships fall apart.''
Andrea Moore, executive director of Florida's Children First, a statewide advocacy organization based in Coral Springs, applauded the court rulings.
PUTTING CHILD FIRST
''Why would society allow a child to suffer for the mistakes of the parents?'' Moore said. ``If you look at it from the child's perspective, the child needs parents who consistently provide and care about them. That should come first. I am not so sure the youngster would care who the biological father was if the man had acted like the father.''
The child, now 7, still believes Richard Parker is his father, both parents said. His name has been withheld to protect his identity.
To be sure, Parker said he still wants to help the child. He said he would like to control where the money goes, and added that he and his current wife are already starting a college fund.
Miami attorney Gerald Kornreich said that courts sometimes order an accounting of such payments, but added that it's not standard because the amount -- in this case, $1,200 a month -- is based on a guideline stemming from the parents' combined salaries.
''Disgruntled dads often say, `I am giving all this money and the mom is using it to go out at night or use it with her boyfriend,'' he said.
''But usually it's too little and not too much'' support.
Biology isn't everything, conceded Parker, himself a child of adoption. He said his son should know as much as he can about his biological father's health history.
''Let's find out who this guy is,'' Parker said.
Same as abortion. It doesn't matter if you had a drunken one-night-stand with a total slut, I think you should have to have responsiblity for the child that union created, even if she lied to you and told you she was on the pill. There is something more at stake now.
I've seen episodes of the People's Court where the man sues some years after he finds out the child isn't his...usually they've never been married, and he doesn't recover child support. Don't recall the time factors involved though, several years at least.
Otherwise, you are just the windbag that I suspect you are.
With abortion on demand as the law I believe with the choice goes the responsibility.
Morally a man should take care of his children, but it is not a mater for the courts, unless the man enters into a contract. Adoption is such a contract.
I hear David Letterman is looking for some new comedians
In my world, conservatives have a sense of justice. By that standard, it is safe in my view to regard you as something other than conservative when it comes to this.
If you had, you would have adressed them as opposed to merely dismissing them as pointless, which they are not.
What I dismissed as pointless is your pointless remark that fathering a child is not a crime. No, your right; it's not. And that's totally irrelevant to the debate at hand. Since you made that totally irrelevant pointless statement in the context of "innocence" or "culpability" I quite clearly stated for you why the adulterous wife and her bedfellow that's the actual father are in fact not innocent regardless that fathering a child is not a crime.
That's it, the People's Court judge said he'd acknowledged the child was his, so he was stuck. In one case the man had kept up visits and was devastated to find the boy wasn't his. The judge said, well as far as that goes, you're the only father he's ever known. Keep up the visits and make the relationship work for both of you.
Yah, you're wrong.
Try that one out if your wife runs up a million dollars in credit and see how it goes. You won't like the results.
From a time when women didn't exercise full citizenship, and enjoy minority protections even though a numerical majority!
Yah, so what? A lot has changed since the Constitution was originally written too. Does that make all of it's ideas void?
"Parents" don't have a thing to do with that. The only person that can put an unborn child to death is a Mother.
That is perposterous unless you consider parenthood to be nothing more then having sex with results.
A father is more then a sperm doner.
So his character is questionable if he resists victimization?
No, he's of questionable character if he would ditch a person he called his son or daughter because of his own convenience.
I say go for it. He'd love you.
Since when is being married to a woman involve the "responsibility" of paying for her willful deceit? What is the precedent for a man having to pay for the "crime" of being deceived by a lying partner? Why isn't it HER responsibility to pay for the kid, and the biological father? Where is this "responsibility" written down? What man ever married a woman promising to pay for her children which weren't from the marriage?
If a man marries a woman who already has children, he is not automatically responsible for their upbringing; that is something the two work out, both of them knowing all the facts ahead of time. What is the precedence for this?
B. Because a child is involved, and it would be far worse to suddenly have the person it's known as it's father ripped away from it.
That's the father's choice--sorry, I know this drives some people nuts, but men ARE human beings, too, and we DO have the right to choose who is and is not in our lives...just like everyone else.
"Far worse" for whom? The child? Yes--so maybe the mother should not have created this situation.
If a mother brought up a child, and then, years later, learned he was not hers, would the mother be FORCED to LOVE her? Of course not. And any judge who forced a mother to keep a child she learned was not hers against her will would be slammed on every TV show around, while the teary-eyed mother said she loved the child she THOUGHT was hers, but her REAL flesh and blood child was stolen from her, etc. etc. My point in drawing this illustration: No mother would ever be forced to BE a mother--we even have abortion and birth control in this country (no matter what I think of those).
But a man deciding who his own kids are? Ta heck with that! How unfeeling! And what about the children?
C. It's a longstanding legal precident, that if you take responsibility for the child at it's birth, you are responsible forever. That's how it should be for the best interest of the kid. He doesn't know anything about sex or divorce or adultry, he only knows his life as it was given to him, and he shouldn't be made to suffer for others.
But that responsibility is taken on under false circumstances. If I told you your house which you bought a year ago had all sorts of problems the previous owner didn't tell you about, would you just shrug and say "Hey, I bought it, oh well"? Or would you demand compensation for your falling-apart house which wasn't what the seller pretended it was when he sold it to you?
For the same reasons, I am also pro-life, because I don't think that the child should be made to suffer because of the sins of the parents. If the man was a man of character, he'd pay it without the court order.
That's bull. It's emotion trumping justice. This isn't about protecting the kid--how on Earth is this protecting the kid--forcing a man to pay his bills? Does anyone think the kid believes the man is doing it because the court ordered him to love the kid? Nope--he's doing it because he's being forced to. The mans' "sin" in this situation is being a man.
If the woman were a woman of character--well, she isn't, and she knew she could get away with not being one. She lied, and ruined this man's life. Yes, hard to believe, but a man thinking he had an honest wife who gave him a child, only to find out he'd married a slut who made a fool of him and had him working his butt off to pay for ANOTHER man's child, is ruined. His life is permanently scarred. The kid's is, too, but the kid is being used as a pawn to get to the man here--it's all about the MAN being of character, when the woman, unless she gets the father to pay up, should be forced to work the rest of her life paying off the husband for the money he paid for another man's child that his wife gave birth to while married to him.
Oh, and BTW, here's another difference between us: You've taken two pre-law classes and I've passed two bar exams.
I seem to recall something about a head up an a$$, earlier.
I wonder what gave it away for a 90 year old woman to know. ROFLOL
Come on gang, I know you have some pictures!
And, one last thing. The reason why I say that you have a warped sense of justice here is because the most bedrock principle of justice is that responsible parties are the ones who are required to take responsibility. You do not justifiably 'punish' one person for the misdeeds of another.
And who ensures that "mom" doesn't spend the money on a new car or crack? No one. This is FRAUD, straight and simple. If this is the current state of the "LAW" then Congress and State Legislatures need to FIX IT.
Certainly put the child first, but the mother needs to be punished, too. Maybe after the child reaches 18 the mother could be forced to perform community service (maybe 100 hours for every year she collected child support). Otherwise, the woman has cheated and not only gotten away with it, but has been rewarded for her transgressions.
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