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.
Tell me, precisely where do you find the "individual responsibility" of (a) the adulterous mother; and (b) the actual father in all of this? Why is it that you demand "individual responsibility" from the one innocent in all this? And yes, there is most certainly innocence and guilt involved in all this. Your straw man that "fathering a child" is not a crime or whatever is totally irrelevant nonsense. The innocence or culpability has nothing to do with the parenting but has to do with the fraudulent deception and with the violation of trust and of the vows of marriage.
"You're a woman, aren't you?"
Yeah, I am. You gotta problem with that?
Oh, and it's probably safe to say that there's plenty of criminal perjury involved in this as well, although those laws are generally suspended in family courts.
With adoption you know the truth.
The child accepted at birth is taken under the assumption no one is cheating you.
There is a difference.
yeah, itmight sound good for a lawyer but I think that version is highly improbable. I think a very very small % of men would allow the direct impregnation method in that situation.
A. When he married a woman who obviously is less then moral. Sure, people make mistakes, both of them do, but that doesn't make them not responsible for their actions, not to me anyway, and I thought not to most so-called 'conservatives'.
B. When he accepted responsibility for the kid when it was born. The kid needs a father. If he was unsure of it's paternaty, he should have said something then. After that, the kid needs a father, he needs solid foundations.
I'm not even going to bother responding to the rest of your rant. You clearly don't understand several of the issues you brushed off as 'nonsense'.
There is a difference. There is not a large enough one.
Think of what you are saying: a lie means the man is not responsible.
So, a man has sex with a woman who says she's on the pill but isn't. I take it you would say he's not reponsible for any kid that might be created? Why not? He was lied to.
You are on LSD if you think a man should be forced to pay for children that aren't of his blood. He may want to pay for many good and fine altruistic reasons but he should never be forced to. A cheating wife who lies about the child's paternity, who steals money from an innocent man (and his real children in another marriage) is the lowest form of life
So amusing how some give woman a pass to lie on such an important matter.
That women cannot be sure that they are the mother to a man's child?
That the male will suck child support and alimony out of them?
That he will put on a big show of tears in court and claim she beat him?
This is probably the most scarily backwards statement I've ever read. Are you actually going to argue we should go back to the days where kids are 'bastards' and outcast because of what their parents did?
Because that is just what you are doing. You are making distinctions on the worth of the child based on who their parents are, and how moral their actions in conception are.
And what the heck does pergery have to do with this case?
You have a twisted sense of morality in my view. You demand "individual responsibility" from the one man for misjudging his wife, but you demand none from her for engaging in deception and adultery, nor any from her fellow adulterer. We obviously aren't on the same wavelength and probably won't be.
He stated that he was not unsure of its paternity at birth and there's every reason to think this was true.
There is no doubt whatsoever that I understand the issues involved, notwithstanding your pointless remark.
Classic. Personal insults when you can't answer the arguements.
Keep it up dipstick.
Wrong. I think the woman is still responsible for the child, I'm not aliving her of anything. What's more, I think it would be an excellent arguement for the father to get custody of the children if he wants it, and I think that she should have to pay alemony and/or child support if that's the case.
Men and women are different. I thought conservatives knew that. Sometimes that requires them to have different rolls. Again, I thought conservatives knew that.
I also thought that they realized parents were of upmost importance in a childs life, and that life isn't always fair, but that it doesn't aliviate you of your responsibilities.
Because if these points of view aren't 'conservative', I guess I'm a liberal, because these are the things that I think.
He stated that he was not unsure of its paternity at birth and there's every reason to think this was true.
Obviously, he was unsure, even if he didn't think he was.
There is no doubt whatsoever that I understand the issues involved, notwithstanding your pointless remark.
If you had, you would have adressed them as opposed to merely dismissing them as pointless, which they are not.
But the bad thing with this is that the real father has no legal obligation to that child. So a women could be having mulitple partners and not tell her husband and when he signs the birth certificate he is making a legal contract even if biology proves otherwise.
Does that mean she should get away with that crime too?
How did that case turn out where the two doctors were having a non-intercourse/Clinton sex affair and she had oral sex with the man, left the room, got herself pregnant and later sued for child support?
No. The child has a father; they should require the mother to reveal who he is if she wants child support payments, or otherwise require her to take responsibility for withholding his name and lying to her ex-husband and to the courts.
Because that is just what you are doing. You are making distinctions on the worth of the child based on who their parents are, and how moral their actions in conception are.
No I'm not. That is inane drivel. I think the child has every right to child support from the father, which isn't the person that's paying child support.
And what the heck does pergery have to do with this case?
The mother evidently committed perjury: (a) when filling out the paternity declaration during custody proceedings; and (b) in the course of the present contested paternity proceeding.
Excuse me?
He's "responsible" for her when she's not responsible for herself. So long as she exercises the privileges of a citzen, he has ZERO responsibility for her.
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. For whom? I think "for the children" as an excuse for state sponsored discrimination is wearing mighty thin these days.
It's a longstanding legal precident, that if you take responsibility for the child at it's birth, you are responsible forever.
From a time when women didn't exercise full citizenship, and enjoy minority protections even though a numerical majority!
he only knows his life as it was given to him, and he shouldn't be made to suffer for others.And he shouldn't be insulated from suffering at the expense of an unwilling foster-parent, either.
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.
"Parents" don't have a thing to do with that. The only person that can put an unborn child to death is a Mother.
If the man was a man of character, he'd pay it without the court order.
So his character is questionable if he resists victimization? You're as bad as she is.
You are opposed to lying, cheating and fraud with one exception. It's OK by you when a woman does this to a man, husband, boyfriend, ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, when it's done to extract child support payments from him for a child that isn't even his. You condone such thievery. You have a million illogical excuses and *explanations* for her
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