Posted on 04/10/2007 1:21:59 PM PDT by Quick or Dead
JEFFERSON CITY — David Salazar is what many would call a "duped dad."
Repeatedly, courts have ordered him to pay child support for a 5-year-old girl, even though no one — not a judge and not the child's mother — claims he's the father.
In the eyes of many, Salazar, of Buchanan County, is the victim of a law that traps men into the child support payments, even though they can prove they're not the dads.
-snip-
That kind of statement angers Sen. Chris Koster, who is sponsoring the Missouri bill.
Koster, R-Harrisonville, said he knew children would be harmed as men used DNA to break paternity. But he said the current law mocked justice by pretending that a man is a father even when the evidence proves otherwise.
His bill would allow men to bring forward DNA evidence at any time to prove they are not obligated to pay child support.
-snip-
Linda Elrod, director of the Children and Family Law Center at Washburn University, said she was saddened by cases where DNA evidence was used to challenge paternity. She said the cases not only cut off support payments but often ruptured a mature parental bond.
Others, such as Jacobs, want to set a two-year deadline for using genetic tests to challenge paternity. She said courts also needed the discretion to weigh the quality of a parental relationship and the best interest of a child.
But Koster said such arguments by law professors ignored the fundamental truth in many cases — that the man is not the father and should not be obligated to pretend he is.
"It would be just as arbitrary to hang the responsibility of supporting the child with those professors," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Your insight is strangely misplaced, since I haven't offered any thoughts at all about how to raise a child.
You're pretty cavalier about using the power of the State to force an innocent man to lose sometimes up to a half-million dollars because some lying, unfaithful scumbag of a woman fingered him for something he didn't do, ya know that?
We're not talking crimes here - innocence or guilt aren't meaningful factors. the issues are 1. is the man the biological father of the child, and 2. has the man cultivated a personal relationship with the child.
Whether his wife was a scumbag is peripheral to the policy concern at issue here. If he isn't the biodad and hasn't developed a parent-child relationship with the child, he is off the hook. If he isn't the biodad and has developed a parent-child relationship with the child, then he shouldn't harm the child more because of some self-pitying weak desire to just walk away from the child.
No option in this situation is good. Somebody is going to get burned. Better the adult male, sorry if that bothers you. It doesn't bother me, and I'd want to be held to the same standard if I were in that situation.
How would you like it if someone said you were guilty of a crime, but offered no evidence of your guilt, and the State went ahead and convicted you without even the possibility of a fair trial?
I wouldn't like it. But this isn't a crime, its an entirely civil matter.
Me? I KNOW my boys are mine. They look like me, they sound like me, and they act like me. (Have pity on their mother, I know LOL. Vengeance is sweet...)
God bless, and very good! ;-)
Still, that doesn't change the fact that I've paid for 2 of her cars and her house over the years. Often times living on generic Kroger-brand biscuits and freeze-dried rice to keep her off my back, too.
I like Kroger generic stuff. Again, very good.
I'm just glad that my boys are grown now, and at long last, what's mine is mine.
Very good, and I am happy for you, but as charming as it is, it doesn't have much to do with what we are discussing.
You are posting to a never married, childless, lawyer that has made the thread about himself, and he is throwing around the personal attacks to keep the juices flowing.
When he takes over one of these threads, all you can do is ignore him, or just drop the thread, because his passive aggressive nature is in it’s element and you are only feeding his uglier side.
I'm beginning to think that HitmanLV just might work for the State, enforcing child support orders for a living.
How's THAT for an agenda?
You have a remarkable ability to not read my posts.
1. Yes I do think the man in that situation should contribute to the financial support of the child if they have cultivated a parent-child relationship. I think the biodad should support the child also. I don't think the woman should get a double payout, but that the two men both contribute to support the child.
2. Child support is for the child, characterizing it as extortion paid to the mother really reveals a strange mindset on your part.
3. Blood relation to the child isn't the most important thing. And you know what, in many ways the courts agree with me. ;-)
So are you equating Rudy with a lowlife lying minister who is cheating on his wife, doing drugs and having sex with a male prostitute?
Actually, I do agree w/ you there. If a man has no control over the child being born, he should not have to support that child, either. However, he then forfeits rights to that child.
Sad that we have to debate these issues at all.
While a citizen's status as taxpayer is sometimes important, it doesn't trump anything in this case. Your reliance on that is strange and misplaced. Doesn't hold water in court - and it shouldn't.
I suppose that means you concede your original point, which is good because you were wrong.
And your attempt here is wrong too - the marriage may be over but the parental relationship both existed and continues to exist. It isn't turned off because a man finds out that his wife spends quality time with some other guy who got her pregnant.
I've seen that guy before. (Or someone very much like him) Poster child for involuntary sterilization, if you ask me.
It's true. She can also be honest with her husband about many other things, too.
So, it is just her husband she is being dishonest with so he should just live with that and pay for some other guys child.
Depends. I have discussed this all over this thread.
What idotic thinking you and many others have. I think FR is full of liberals. Only a liberal would think someone who is not the biolobigal father should pay support for a child.
I'm not a liberal, and I believe this, so you are wrong.
HEAR HEAR!
According to that jackass, my sister should be allowed to sue ME for support because I took my nephew under my wing when the boy's "father" ran off without a word!
The irony of this is the likelihood that the same idiots who are proponents of this are likely supporters of the ERA.
Frankly, I think the Republican Party should back the ERA.
Laws like this one would be struck down immediately under that amendment. W
If you love kids so much why don’t you just randomly pay child support for a few. Walk the walk rather than just talk the talk.
You throw around loving and caring but what do you have to show for it. Make somebody else pay and you feel good. Great, somebody should make a law, oh wait, they already did.
I am raising and therefore paying for three children, by your definition, I love kids more than you do.
Making somebody else pay for your good intentions is deceitful and immoral, unfortunately, it is not illegal.
When a personal relationship has been cultivated, and the child looks at that man as the father, we as a culture should give a damn about it.
the real father doesn't, the real mother didn't care enough to be decent in her selection of the father and is willing to screw some other guy over.
This is misdirection I consistently see from so many self pitying males around here. The relationship - and actions - of the mother aren't at issue here. The relationship between the man and the child is what's important.
How can you defend injustice, persecution of an innocent man and involuntary servitude?
I have explained the circumstances when I think the man should bear some responsibility for the child, I won't go into those here again, since it doesn't seem many Freepers are meaningfully absorbing them
But as for what you raised:
1. Injustice - sometimes each option out of a set of options is unjust, so whatever we do we get an unjust result. Better the brunt of the injustice is absorbed by an adult male than a child.
2. persecution of an innocent man - that's overstatement. There is no persecution here, and as I have said the biodad should be responsible for the financial support, also. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
3. Involuntary servitude - that's overstatement, too. There is no involuntary servitude.
No, it's not misplaced, since that is the only contribution to the child's life that can be legally enforced. Nothing else can be required by the court.
Speaking of that, my brother finally won custody of my nieces from their shiftless, unemployed, fat, livin-in-da-ghetto mother.
And what does she pay my brother in support? NOTHI-I-I-I-I-I-ING.
The "family" courts in this country are a mockery of justice.
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