Posted on 12/26/2002 8:34:04 AM PST by BuddhaBoy
Patrick McCarthy was floored to learn after his divorce that his 14-year-old daughter had been fathered by another man. He was even more stunned to find out that he would still have to pay $280 a month in child support.
"You have to be a stone not to react emotionally to something like that," said McCarthy, 41, a delivery service driver from Hillsborough, N.J. "The thing I found more disturbing was the way they treat you in court."
In New Jersey, as in most other states, children born during a marriage are the legal responsibility of the husband - even if he isn't the biological father.
Now some of these "duped dads," as they call themselves, are waging state-by-state battles to institute "paternity fraud" laws. Fueled by anger and raw emotion, they are forming grassroots groups and pressing for the right to use DNA evidence in court to be free of making support payments for children they didn't father.
New Jersey Citizens Against Paternity Fraud, which McCarthy founded, recently paid $50,000 for nine billboards along highways (and other ads) that show a pregnant woman and read "Is It Yours? If Not, You Still Have to Pay!"
"Why does a man who is not the father have to bear the financial responsibility for fraud?" asked New Jersey Assemblyman Neil Cohen (D., Union), who sponsored legislation allowing men to use DNA tests to disprove paternity and end financial support. The bill recently came out of committee and faces a vote from the Assembly.
But women's groups and child advocates are alarmed by a trend that they say could harm children.
"It's not as simple as, 'This isn't fair, I have to pay for somebody else's kid,' " said Valerie Ackerman, staff lawyer at the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland, Calif. "Families are much more than biology."
It is not known how many men would try to disprove paternity in court, even if they could. An American Association of Blood Bank survey in 2000 of 30,626 paternity tests showed that 30 percent of those taking the tests were not the real fathers.
What is clear is that the law is not on their side. Most states require nonbiological fathers to keep paying child support even if they were deceived by their spouses, based on the 500-year-old legal presumption that any child born during a marriage is the husband's.
For unmarried fathers, if the paternity is not challenged at birth, they generally do not get a second chance to raise the issue.
But more and more states are reshaping these laws. Men have won the right by legislation or case law to use genetic testing to disprove paternity in 12 states. Three more, including New Jersey, have pending legislation that let nonbiological fathers off the hook.
Since 1999, Pennsylvania lawmakers twice turned down similar legislation, introduced after a Reading man, Gerald Miscovich, sought relief from the $537 a month he was paying for a child who was not his. He lost the case and ended all contact with the then-4-year-old boy. Sen. Michael A. O'Pake (D., Reading) plans to reintroduce the bill next month.
Carnell Smith of Decatur, Ga., is one of two men who appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court after lower courts ruled against them. Smith is trying to recoup more than $40,000 from his ex-girlfriend after learning three years ago that her 13-year-old girl is not his. But the Supreme Court declined to hear his case, meaning he must continue to pay $750 a month in child support.
"It's not a gender war from my perspective. It's about truth," said Smith, who founded U.S. Citizens Against Paternity Fraud. His group - whose slogan is "If the genes don't fit, you must acquit" - lobbied for the law that Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes signed in May.
Others have not been swayed. In October, California Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a paternity fraud bill, saying the measure would only delay child support collection and let some biological fathers wriggle out of parental responsibility.
Child advocates agree. They worry that children will be traumatized by losing the emotional and financial support of the person they know as "Dad."
"I would think if there's a close parent-child relationship, then the matter of whose DNA the child is carrying wouldn't matter that much," said Laura Morgan, chairwoman of the American Bar Association's Child Support Committee. "It's too easily reducing parentage to dollars and DNA."
In many cases, a man suspects a child is not his and chooses to raise the child anyway, said Paula Roberts, a lawyer at the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington. But after a divorce "he has a new wife and she's saying, 'Why are we paying for this kid?' Now he wants out," she said.
"What kind of damage have we done to the kids if the person they know as their father wants out?"
Some of the new statutes give fathers two years to contest paternity. Men say such deadlines are unfair because women can sue to establish paternity at any time in a child's life.
But Ackerman, with the youth law center, said "you give a person unlimited time to establish paternity, it leaves a child in limbo their entire lives."
Those pressing for the new laws say they do not anticipate wide-scale child abandonment. Cohen, a lawyer who has represented both men and women in these types of cases, said that "when [fathers] have a relationship with their son or daughter, they don't necessarily walk away from the child. They just don't want to have the financial responsibility."
But he has also seen men who were "so angry and upset over being lied to, they walk away," he said.
These non-dads, who network via e-mail and compare hard-luck stories, say the issue goes beyond monthly child support checks.
"To not allow DNA testing is not allowing the truth to come forward," said McCarthy, who would like to see every child's DNA tested at birth to prevent mix-ups. "My contention is every child has a right to know who their biological parents are."
Even though McCarthy's daughter looked nothing like him, he never suspected she was not his until his ex-wife blurted it out during an argument, he said. He used a home DNA kit and a cheek swab to confirm there was virtually no chance the girl was his.
With no legal standing, he continued supporting her and began lobbying for a change in the law. Though their relationship is strained, the girl, now 19, still calls him "Dad," said McCarthy, who lives with his second wife and their two children.
What really galls these men "is the fact that you have to pay support to an ex-wife who lied to you and deceived you," McCarthy said. (Like some other men in the movement, he declined to provide information about his ex-wife.)
One man who would greatly benefit from the new laws is Morgan Wise, of Big Spring, Texas. A train engineer, he was married for 13 years to a woman who had four children. The youngest had cystic fibrosis. After he divorced in 1996, he said, he took a test to see which cystic fibrosis gene he carried.
No such gene was found. DNA testing showed that three of the four children were not his.
"I cried. I got angry, not toward the children but toward my wife," he said.
His wife, Wanda Scroggins, said that he knew "there was a possibility" the children weren't his. She said they both had affairs during their marriage and he agreed to raise the children as his own.
They also agreed to keep the truth to themselves, but Wise told the children one day while they were at school. It cost him visitation rights for two years.
In another blow, a Texas court ruled that he still had to pay $1,100 a month in child support. In January, the U.S Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal.
Recently, Wise began spending time again with the children, but the relationship is rocky.
"If it's your kid, no matter who the biological father is, how does that matter?" Scroggins asked. "He was there when they were born, he changed their diapers, saw their first steps, kissed their boo-boos. How do you just stop that?"
Took the words right out of my mouth...you sure we aren't clones?
Good point. I was scanning to see if someone made that rather obvious point. This is 30% of the cases where there is some doubt or reason to test.
But his problem is not the cost of this child.
The problem is that your hypothetical sailor is now supporting the whore and her pimp, as well as the child.
If the child were legally his without question, there would be no support payments, he would be living in his house, and his whore of an ex-wife would be sleeping on a bench.
Custody is the key. Everything else flows from that.
In other words, punish the child for the mother's behavior. You care more about the man than the child, which is not surprising since we live in an age of "me me me." If this happened to me (and I am female so this is a hypothetical) I would continue to love the child as if she were my own out of human decency and love of the innocent person I raised up to that point. Anything less is cruel to the child who has been blind-sided. I realize most would reject that, as it takes showing compassion to the helpless. ~~ JMJ333
Does this mean that the Wronged Husband should not show Compassion for the child-of-adultery who is born of the wife's unfaithfulness? No, the Husband can and should demonstrate whatever Christian Charity (by definition, uncompelled) that the Holy Spirit lays upon him -- not the least of which would be (if legally possible), removing the Child entirely from the household of an adulteress and raising the child as his own.
But the husband's prerogative of showing Uncompelled Charity does not define for us his LEGAL responsibilities. As with ALL legal morality, the Bible defines our legal responsibilities. And the Bible says that a Man is lawfully permitted to completely put away a wife who has been sexually Unfaithful to him, with NO legal obligation.
Since End the Hypocrisy's position is Biblically correct from a legal standpoint, ETH's position is morally correct.
The Word cannot be Broken. QED.
HELL YEAH, baby.
WE HAVE NO GOD BUT CAESAR, that's what I always say!!
Anything that expands Caesar's power and control of his subjects, has GOT to be good. He's from the Government... he's here to help us.
In New Jersey, as in most other states, children born during a marriage are the legal responsibility of the husband - even if he isn't the biological father.
When you let Nero define and certify "marriage", then the Marital Responsibilities are whatever the insane Caesar says they are. It was OUR choice, Messiah-State "christians", to whore out the Institution of Marriage to the bed of Caesar; so now we hardly have cause to complain when he subjects our prostituted institution to some "rough trade".
Were Marriage established by Private Partnership (see Abram and Sarai, or Moses and Zipporah for examples), the Marital Responsibilities would be established in advance -- by private contract.
Or, whatever variation the two Contracting Parties think is best. Different strokes for different folks.
Everyone would know in advance what their legal standing would be... defined by Contract, mutually-agreed and sworn before Witnesses (such as a Presbyter!). Cut...and...dried.
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled "solutions"... defined as, "ever-increasing the Power of the Messiah-State".
Does he just get to use her and send her back to the Pound?
Since her legal guardian did not bother with the paperwork, legally he does. The exception would be the "promises" made to her, which could be interpretted as a legally binding verbal contract. As I stated earlier, I believe that he has a moral obligation to the girl, but he has no legal right (the mother can block him) or responsibility (other than specific promises) to the girl.
I see a clear line between legal rights and responsibilities, and moral ones.
Biblically, Rapists should be Executed.
This would tend to leave the child of rape... fatherless.
Nonetheless, it's the Biblically-correct thing to do.
I once held very similar opinions to BuddhaBoy on the subject of marriage. I was well into my 30's before I finally took the plunge.
Respectfully, Ma'am, you were responding to ETH's argument that the man should be allowed to walk away, without obligation.
In other words, punish the child for the mother's behavior. You care more about the man than the child, which is not surprising since we live in an age of "me me me."
Respectfully, the Bible is not a book of "me me me". But while it certainly has oceans of good (neh, infallible, of course!) things to say in favor of Charity and Love, when it comes to the making of Law (i.e., "what should the man be allowed to do in this situation"), ETH's position is 100% Biblically spot-on as it comes to the proper legal requirement.
What should the man, in this situation, be allowed to do?
Biblically, he should be allowed to walk away -- with zero Legal Obligation.
I dont know. Are you a black conservative lady killer?
LOL!
And yes...me me me...that's all I've heard on this thread. I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from a society that's devolved into hedonism.
Have a good night, op.
Gotta run..
Your turn. What is fair and just for the sailor returning from deployment who discovers his wife is pregnant with someone elses child?
Assume there are other children in the home (which may or may not be his), then assume there are none. Do your answers change? Why? The law currently sees no distinction.
He has to pay child support,(it's for the chillerin')
and make the car payment,(junior has to have a way to the doctor)
and for day-care.(Hey, a girl has to work)
and if he raises his voice about it, he gets a restraining order, and then he can't see the kids whether they were his or not.
This crap plays out in family court everyday, and it needs to end.
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