Posted on 04/05/2006 8:14:34 AM PDT by FreeManDC
Laws that protect the fairer sex from rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment all rest on a simple assumption: women who claim to be victims are almost always telling the truth. Maybe it’s time to revisit that belief.
Three weeks ago the National Center for Men filed a lawsuit on behalf of Matt Dubay, 25, who claims his girlfriend repeatedly assured him that she was unable to get pregnant. When she later bore a child, the state of Michigan went after Mr. Dubay for child support.
That’s what people used to call entrapment.
But chivalrous pundits rose to defend the honor of this damsel in distress, dubbing Mr. Dubay a “sexual predator,” “deadbeat dad,” and – horrors! -- a “weasel.” And if you happen to believe that men should be shouldered with the responsibilities and women enjoy all the rights, their criticisms certainly ring true.
Recently That's Life! magazine polled 5,000 women and asked them if they would lie to get pregnant. Two-fifths of the women – 42% to be exact – said “yes,” according to NCM’s Kingsley Morse.
Yikes!
But that was just a hypothetical survey. Women would never stick it to a man they actually knew. Or would they?
Consider the paternity scam. Here’s how it works:
Find any dim-witted man to get you pregnant. Then look up the name of some unsuspecting Joe who’s got a steady job – it doesn’t matter that you never met the poor bloke. Put his name on the baby’s birth certificate.
Now cross your fingers and hope the man is out of town when the sheriff delivers the papers. In California, such default judgments account for 70% of paternity decisions, according to a 2003 study by the Urban Institute.
Or defraud one of your previous boyfriends, assuming he’s a good breadwinner, of course. That’s what happened to Carnell Smith of Georgia, who willingly assumed financial responsibility for a child, shelling out more than $40,000 in child support over an 11-year period. But when the mother went to court to up the payments, Smith requested genetic testing. That’s when he learned, to his great surprise, that he wasn’t the girl’s father.
Stung by the injustice, Mr. Smith founded Citizens Against Paternity Fraud, [http://paternityfraud.com/pf_fight_back.html] a group that works to protect men from being cheated by these modern-day Welfare Queens.
Last year Michael Gilding, sociology professor at Swinburne University in Australia, reviewed studies from around the world, and concluded that 1-3% of children were fathered by someone other than the man who believes he’s the daddy.
Let’s run the math. Four million children are born in the United States each year. Using the mid-range 2% figure, that means 80,000 men become victims of paternity fraud.
Yikes again!
Ready for the next scam?
This one involves false allegations of domestic violence. Each year, one million restraining orders are issued that serve to evict a person – usually a man -- from his own home.
Restraining orders have become so commonplace that family lawyers refer to them as silver bullets, slam-dunks, or simply, “divorce planning.” It has been estimated that one-third of those orders are requested as a legal ploy in the middle of a divorce proceeding. Not only are the orders easy to get, in many states a restraining order automatically bans a father from gaining joint custody of his children. [www.mediaradar.org/docs/VAWA-Threat-to-Families.pdf]
So the restraining order granted on the flimsy grounds that he caused “emotional distress” becomes the woman’s meal ticket to many years of child support payments. Prosecutors never go after persons who commit perjury, anyway.
And state welfare agencies don’t get upset either, because the federal Office for Child Support Enforcement reimburses 66% of the costs of states’ child support enforcement activities. Think of it as a bounty payment for deleting daddies.
So let’s see . . . 42% of women admit they would lie to get pregnant. Each year 80,000 non-biological fathers become victims of paternity fraud. And about 300,000 restraining orders are issued in the middle of a divorce.
Assume a father so defrauded finds himself on the hook for $250 a month for each of his children. Over an 18-year period, that comes out to a cushy $54,000, all legally-enforceable, tax-free, and no strings attached.
In the past the American legal system was guided by the rule, “No person shall benefit from their own wrong-doing.” But now, hundreds of thousands of women replace that dictum with the self-indulgent excuse: “Get while the getting is good.”
Bogus, he assumes that all the kids who aren't biologically the fathers, the father is unaware... and while it might not be the topic of polite conversatation, at least some of these kids the father is full aware the kid is not biologically his, even if his wife did bear the child.
But its really irrellevant... other than the women lying on birth certificates naming guys they have never even met to defraud them... most of this is flat out rubbish.
If you have sex with someone, pregnancy is ALWAYS a possibility.... no matter what they tell you.
You're right, I didn't read the entire article the first go 'round because it was so lame. I did re-read it and seriously doubt there are many men as stupid as Carnell Smith, who didn't demand a paternity test, but paid child support for years.
All fraud victims have recourse. Yes, it might cost them some money, but that's what civil suits are for. Anyone that doesn't fight back and pays child support for children that are not theirs is a fool, and hopefully won't add to the gene pool.
I hear you. I am in Washington and am paying more than that.
Hey now, I resent that... while I got as high a libido as you can find, I have never lied to get laid.... I am what I am... take it or leave it.
I read the article and I know what it is saying. I also recognized that the man in the article was not selected from a phone book. He was having a sexual relationship with the woman and had a child as a result of the relationship. A man who is incorrectly named as a parent on a birth certificate can request a paternity test. If he never met the woman, he will not be required to pay child support.
actually when it comes to paternity fraud it is very disturbing.
A person looses an absolute right to appeal if they do not dispute a paternity claim, EVEN IF THEY DON"T KNOW ABOUT THE CLAIM UNTIL YEARS LATER.
It does not matter the DNA comes back negative.
I think the best first step is to make a strict liability issue on paternity fraud. If the DNA comes back negative AT ANY TIME, the all child support obligations are void as a matter of law. (not voidable, VOID as if never were there)
THEN the wronged man has the right to sue the woman for recovery of fraudulently obtained money. (fraud BTW is not dischargable in bankrupcy)
This of course has nothing to do with the man who is dumb enough to believe a woman who lied about her fertility.
(of course i would even do away with the common law notion of legitimacy in marriage and allow a husband to be absolved of a child born of adultery)
LOL!
You're both so bad (and I like that :) )
"I don't know of any court that would force a man to pay child support to a woman he did not know."
Then you need to open your eyes and look around. They are all over the country and it happens far too often.
Do the research yourself.
Additionally, many states have laws that provide that between married couples, the child born during marriage is conclusively presumed to be fathered by the spouse, even if DNA testing proves that it wasn't his child.
True. He does have to jump through hoops through no fault of his own, which is very unfair. My guess is that he will end up feeling pretty happy that he didn't "get screwed" when he is not required to pay the child support. I believe the woman in that case should be required to reimburse him for his costs at least.
I know a woman who did the same thing to some guy. She sees herself as a Christian woman, I told her the truth of what she had done from a Christian viewpoint and she told me I had too much anger in my heart and that she'd pray for me.
She married her 5th husband, shortly after she convinced him to divorce his wife.
/s
I don't agree with what the woman in your example did. It was unfair to the man and didn't seem to be concerned much about her child. However, once you sign adoption papers, you have claimed the child as your own. I hope that he is able to spend some time as a father to the child and not just pay the bills.
It sure is easy to tell which women posting on this thread are using their children as income.
I have read a number of articles over time on Free Republic and I promise you, that it DOES happen. There are definitely men who are being forced to pay child support for children they didn't father.
I don't know the specific law in Texas, but I know that my brother received a default judgement to pay child support and he was able to contest it on the grounds that the child was not his. The court ordered the woman to have a paternity test. The paternity test indicated that he was the father so the judgement stood. That was in Georgia, but I find it hard to believe that there isn't a similar legal mechanism in Texas.
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