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.
A. Because he married her, and is now responsible for her.
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.
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.
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.
Umm, no it won't.
I learned this in pre-law 101. It's as old as the hills.
This isn't like a murder or a rape. This isn't just dealing with the victim, there's someone else involved.
If you accept a child at birth, without question, it's the same as adoption. What, are you going to argue that parents that adopt kids should be able to 'divorce' their kids if they divorce their spouse as well? Rediculous, for obvious reasons. This is no different.
Thanks for the backup.
But you are ok with a parent having to suffer for the sins of the other parent? What's wrong with the guy who actually fathered the child paying the support? Got any thing agaist that? This is so wrong that words fail a person trying to describe how wrong it is. The wife decieves the husband, the husband believes it is his child because she lies and tells him it is(this is fraud), but when he finds out years later it isn't his child, he has to keep paying because he didn't assume she was a slut from the git go and have a DNA test at birth! This is outrageous and you find nothing wrong with it, unbelievable.
They are getting married, just NO children from what I have seen.
I agree with you by the way. There is no doubt, as the person to whom you responded stated, that it is long-standing legal principle for the declared father at birth to be responsible for the child notwithstanding later contested paternity. However, now that we have DNA testing that can eliminate any doubt when a man did not sire the child, I think that the laws will change within 10-20 years so that establishing non-paternity will absolve men of child-support obligations.
DNA DNA DNA DNA changes alot of old laws it will change this one also. If I accept any legal binding contract under false pretenses then the contract becomes null and void.
dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
This topic is all about money grubbing cheating women. Seems you favor liars and thieves when they are female. You frown on the man who refuses to pay for children he never fathered.
This is not the same and you know it. He didn't adopt the kid, once you adopt a child it is yours. He accepted the child because he was TOLD by the mother is was his, he didn't accept it because he was being benevolent and taking on the support of another man's child, he was doing it because he believed the lie that it was his. Entirely different. You have your head squarely up your a** if you think other wise.
You are completely missing the point. First off, fathering a child is not a crime, and you can't be 'innocent' if it.
Second, he may not have fathered the child, but he accepted responsibility for it by calling it his own at birth. He's now accepted responsibility for the kid. It merely requires him to live up to his responsibility.
This is the ONLY place in US law where a person has to pay the penalty for another person's crime. Disgusting.
Rediculous. Again, this isn't a crime, and I'm pretty sure this isn't unique to the US. It's a legal principle that is hundreds of years old.
Heck, the Libs have a fit about the idea of forcing a woman to go through with a pregnancy she doesn't want. Where does the rights of the child trump the rights of the mother in *that* situation?
Do you realize what you are saying?
If you are arguing the pro-abortion side, you just did a great job. But if you are pro-life like me, you just made my point.
Is it exactly the same? No. It is mostly the same? Yes.
I'm pro-life for the same reasons. I think the life of the child is more important then the convenience of the parents. The consequences are a little less severe here for the child, but the same basic ideas apply.
And you have your head up your a$$ if you don't realize it.
No, I frown upon men who won't step up and take care of kids that need taken care of, after he already said he would by accepting the child as his responsibility.
It sickens me that even so-called 'conservatives', people who are suppose to believe in individual responsibility, would shirk something so important as fatherhood because of something like this. Just because your life doesn't go the way you wanted it to doesn't mean that you get to opt out of your responsibilities.
Never mind that the money taken from the one man is usually also taken from his own legitimate children. This is especially the case in states like California that provide only 30 days to contest paternity, oftentimes 'established' without the knowledge of the non-father who doesn't even know that he's been named, in a number of cases by women he doesn't even know, because they have provided a name to Social Services which is incorrectly tracked to him, and then for whatever reason he never receives the summons that is delivered to someone else.
This has been English law for 500 years. And I have had no problem with that. It had a certain crude logic that preserved families. But today we have DNA testing and women who work outside the home, who can often make more than men. If she wants to cheat her way through life, let her earn her way through life.
DNA testing has changed other laws. Paternity support for children who aren't yours will also bite the dust. Feminist money grubbers cannot stop DNA technology factoring into more and more paternity/child support cases. There's even a new TV show this season that deals with incarcerated criminals being freed by new DNA evidence
Well said.
I've head of such laws and cases.
When a child is in the middle, and he, as a adult individual making his own choices, married this woman and accepted her child as his? Absofreakinglutely. It's called individual responsibility. Was he lied to? Maybe, but that doesn't matter to the kid, and it doesn't change the fact that he took responsiblity for him.
What's wrong with the guy who actually fathered the child paying the support? Got any thing agaist that?
Yes. He's not the kids father as far as I'm concerned. Men are not merely seman factories.
This is so wrong that words fail a person trying to describe how wrong it is. The wife decieves the husband, the husband believes it is his child because she lies and tells him it is(this is fraud), but when he finds out years later it isn't his child, he has to keep paying because he didn't assume she was a slut from the git go and have a DNA test at birth! This is outrageous and you find nothing wrong with it, unbelievable.
Yah, words to fail you, alright, because you aren't making a lot of sense here.
I didn't say I found nothing wrong with it, I merely said I still thought that the man who was responsible for this woman, and took responsibility for his child, should not be released of his responsibility.
What is unbelivable is that you seem to be willing to sell a kid down the river for the convinience of that person he has called dad since he was born. Does a lie destroy that bond? Hell no.
What about a man who has sex with a woman who says she's on the pill, but isn't? Should he be released from having to take care of the child because he was lied to?
Heck, if I thought of things like you do, I'd say yes.
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