Posted on 06/02/2002 2:09:08 AM PDT by RogerFGay
MND NEWSWIRE
CHICAGO, IL - Carnell A. Smith is a father who is forced by court order to pay child support for another man's child. This child is neither his biological nor adopted child. Smith has tried to get the lower courts to overturn the child support order, but they have refused.
Carnell Smith is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his DNA "paternity fraud" case. Nationally renowned fathers' rights attorney and advocate, Jeffery M. Leving of Chicago, has filed an appearance with the high court to represent Smith.
Although this court ruling sounds unusual, it isn't. There are countless men who find themselves in Smith's situation.
Partially as a result of the availability of DNA paternity testing, men are discovering in alarming numbers that children they believed were their biological offspring are not. It was reported that in 28 percent of paternity tests conducted in 1999, the man being tested was not the biological father. Nevertheless, many of these men continue to be liable for child support for other men's children or suffer the consequences of jail.
This can happen to married men because many states adhere to a 500-year-old English common-law doctrine that presumes a married man is the father of a child born of the marriage. Never-married men can find themselves in this precarious position through default paternity and child support judgments. Such a judgment can be court ordered without the alleged father's knowledge. For example, the alleged dad does not show up at court to contest the paternity action because he did not know about the court date. This can result when the alleged father is not personally served notice of the court date by a process server or law enforcement officer.
"The issue is crystal clear. Paternity fraud is just as reprehensible as any other kind of fraud from which Americans need protection. When we condone fraud in paternity DNA cases, we undermine our entire system of justice. It's time to correct this injustice," said Leving.
This is an issue with urgent national significance.
"Paternity fraud is the only crime where the victim is persecuted for the actions of the guilty party," said Smith. "My case is representative of many similar cases nationwide. A correct decision by the U.S. Supreme Court would offer justice and relief to many."
"My petition to the high court argues that the Georgia statute enables the Georgia courts to have the power to force biological fathers to pay child support, but this power does not extend to forcing a non-relative who did not adopt a child to pay," said Smith.
"Making men pay child support for children proven by DNA testing not to be theirs is not in the best interests of children and families. It can also deprive children of ever knowing their true biological fathers," said Leving.
Nationally, this issue has picked up great momentum. Ohio and, most recently, Georgia have passed legislation that allows men proven by DNA testing not to be the father of a child to be released from child support payments. Georgia passed paternity legislation with votes overwhelmingly in favor of releasing non-dads from being forced to pay child support. In Georgia, the legislation passed the House 163-0 and the Senate 45-5. California is currently considering similar legislation.
Leving believes that this U.S. Supreme Court case could bring relief to countless victims of paternity fraud in America and stop the needless suffering of children and families. Otherwise, the laws dealing with paternity and child support issues must be changed gradually state by state, which will be unnecessarily time-consuming and will prolong the injustice.
Contact:
Jeffery Leving, 312-807-3990, or
Jane Spies, 330-534-8948,
both for The Law Offices of Jeffery M. Leving, Ltd.
Think about it - bad actors show 72% faithfulness - for others the figure has to be even higher, approaching 100%, barring artificial insemination, good friends, etc.
This made total sense in the age where there was literally no earthly way to conclusively determine paternity.
The importance of the family unit and the necessity to protect children demanded it. In spite of strange changes to our society's rules, that importance and necessity is needed more than ever.
Having said that, now that there is a means of unambiguosly determining the fraud and criminality involved, it is time to dump that well-intentioned 500-year-old law, and to stop rewarding fraud and crime.
Not only should the payments stop, but the female perpetrators should be forced to make restitution and/or do jail time.
It's a no-brainer, from my perspective.
The Hite Report on Male Sexuality (1980), surveying 7,239 men, found 72% of men married two years or more had had sex outside of marriage. But wait, here's an oink of a surprise -- the increase for women having affairs has been even more significant.
The Kinsey Report (1948) sampled 6,000 women and showed that by age forty, 26% of the women had experienced extramarital sexual intercourse.
Morton Hunt's 1972 survey showed that 52% of divorced women had had an affair, many of which occurred during the last few years of the marriage.
Cosmopolitan magazine's 1980 survey of 106,000 readers (women between the ages of 18 and 34) reported that 50% had at least one extramarital experience. For those over age 35, it jumped to 69.2%.
Sociologist Lynn Atwater, author of The Extramarital Connection (1982), a book about women having extramarital affairs, reported, "it is among women, more so than men, that rates of extramarital participation are rising dramatically."
And Shere Hite's 1987 report of 4,500 women in Women and Love found that 70% of women married five years or more were having sex outside of their marriages.
Because it's expedient and convenient?
I certainly hope not.
Injustice is injustice.
If the welfare of the child is so important, the woman should be forced to divulge the father's name.
Finally, what is the result when a known father is literally unable to provide financial support now?
The criminal (woman) should be subject to exactly the same penalties, should she be unwilling or unable to name the biological father.
As the percent of all births to unmarried black mothers more than tripled, from 21.6% to 69.8%, the percent of all births to unmarried White mothers increased more than 11 fold, from 2.3% to 25.7%.
http://christianparty.net/blacksillegitimacy.htm
Not much lower. There is a famous study that was done in the 1920's or 1930's (if I find the link I'll post it) by some doctor who was studying the inheritability of disease. He acquired a fairly large random sample of blood tests from couples and their children. He went on to publish his study, but never mentioned something that was found in his notes years later, after he had died... that in 20% of the cases, the fathers were not related to the children. He thought it the better part of valor to simply exclude such families from his study, and not say anything. Remember, this was using blood tests, which have a much higher rate of false positives than DNA tests do.
There is nothing new here... cuckoldry is as old as humanity.
Yes, 1/3 of ALL!!!! american births are now illegitimate !!!
1/3 of ALL americans are B*******.
1/3 of all american babies do not have married parents.
Is this clear now?
Where have you been?
http://cloud9.norc.uchicago.edu/dlib/sc-42.htm
Moveover, during the last generation, childbearing increasingly became disconnected from marriage. In 1960 only 5.3% of births were to unmarried mothers while by 1996 over 32% of all births were outside of marriage (Table 4).3
The Emerging 21st Century American Family Tom W. Smith National Opinion Research Center University of Chicago RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 24, 1999 GSS Social Change Report No. 42
Are you still under the illusion that all women are sugar and spice?
The good news, is that we have had "zero population growth for the past 30 years(less traffic, less taxes, cheaper home prices, full employment, employers begging for workers, high school and college graduates hunted down hungry companies wanting replacement employees, etc)
The bad news, is that with record immigration, american born workers cannot find jobs, and our population instead of being about 220 million, it is now well over 285 million .
http://cloud9.norc.uchicago.edu/dlib/sc-42.htm
Along with the decline of marriage has come a decline in childbearing. The fertility rate peaked at 3.65 children per woman at the height of the Baby Boom in 1957 and then declined rapidly to a rate of 1.75 children in 1975. This is below the "replacement level" of about 2.11 children that is needed for a population to hold its own through natural increase. The rate then slowly gained ground to 2.0-2.1 children in the early 1990s. The results of the changes in the fertility rate are shown in Table 3.
My only comment is that this is only one of many anti-male, anti-father injustices in the dung heap of a legal system in the US.
In order to pander to feminazis, I would point out an example in NY. As one of his first acts in office, RINO Governor George Pataki signed a law making males totally without rights in any area of the restraining order process.
To give an example, I have a friend who is a distinguished NY City detective who cannot visit his children, even though it is court ordered. The lawyer ex-wife has a completely bogus Order of Protection, based on no evidence whatsoever. The detective knows full well that if he ever tries to pick up his young children at curbside, even if he brings a witness, the ex-wife has only to make an unsubstantiated allegation and he is automatically arrested under the Pataki/Democrat law no questions asked. He knows this because he himself has had to enforce this horrifcally unjust law, knowing full well that the men he arrested were innocent.
If you have doubts about todays illegitimacy rate, then you do not believe EVERY study and EVERY official statistic about todays childbirths.
http://www.unmarried.org/statistics.html
33% of all births are to unmarried women. - National Center for Health Statistics, 1999 data (report released 2001)
Things have changed since women now wear the pants, can now smoke cigarettes, drink men under the table, and train to be marines.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/usadecline.html
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/usadecline.html#table
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