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I'm afraid you missed the subtler side of my point: It is the patina of legitimacy because it is achieved fraudulently. In my opinion, allowing the situation to stand as-is is itself a dilution of the legal protection of marriage. After all, the situation under discussion is analogous to filing fraudulent welfare claims.

I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree that punishing wrongdoing (fraud) will usher in any type of liberal Utopia. Nor does it undermine marriage. What undermines marriage is the ability of one spouse (the wife) to force the other to pay for the results of her dalliance with another man. The wife is rewarded for dishonesty.

I'd also like to point out that there are myriad examples of high-salaried moms garnering 40-70% of the lower-salaried dad's monthly income for child support, despite there being little or no evidence of the mom's actually expending said money on the kid(s). My brother-in-law is one such case (she makes four or five times as much as he does). While this point is tangential to the original argument, it bears insertion to show that the fraud side of the line is just one issue amongst many that are stacked against fathers.

BTW - I will be married for 14 years come August, with 3 kids. Our goal is at least 50.:-)

Marriage has always recognized children of a legal marriage as the legal responsiblity of the parties to the marriage regardless of biology, since common law.

This prevents a bio father claiming children as his, when born into wedlock to another man and interfering in either the marriage, family relationships, or the upbringing of the children, or making claims to the child's labor or earnings.

Times have changed, now kids are considered a burden, not an asset. But as regards to unwittingly cuckolded fathers today (and some are tacit or active partners in this), It's a shame and to d*** bad, BUT, (and you knew there was one) the legal child is a party to the marriage and is innocent of the fraud and is the one who is being disenfranchised by his parents actions, not the husband!

Like I said, law trumps biology. Parental rights and responsibility should rest on lsw first and biology second, and where the two conflict, law must prevail.

Parents may divorce each other, but not their legal children. Otherwise a system already swamped with false accusations and endless wrangling will be further swamped as every divorce with children will now involve endless DNA testing, along with all kinds of "reparation suits" against unwitting men who have no idea that they are the bio-fathers from brief or near-anonymous relationships.

The idea that maintaining legal rights to children born in a legal marriage is a punishment, shows the sad status children have sunk to. Too bad everyone isn't fighting for the right to love and rear the child, rather than shove it off on DNA related strangers.

I suppose the solution is to DNA test all newborns before the birth certificate is filled out. And then if the claimed bio dad gets a negative, we can have federally mandated testing of all males named in the required sexual history of the birth mother, so we can properly coerce the correct sperm donor.

I prefer to old system of law, where men could avoid supporting progeny by avoiding marriage and women could force support of progeny by insisting on marriage before engaging in intimate relations.

I just don't see how knocking another precept out of the foundation of marriage is going to increase fairness and justice.

Men's groups should be fighting to restore faulted divorce not disenfranchise their legal but non-bio children.