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.
Among its other shortcomings of omission and commission, the California Legislature is a very inconsistent purveyor of public policy, constantly enacting legislation that reverses other laws, sometimes even within the same legislative session.
While the syndrome is not a new one, the rapid turnover of legislators mandated by term limits may exacerbate it as it damages institutional memory. New people have new slants on matters of public policy and are not shy about engraving them into law, regardless of how they may conflict with past policies.
Most of the time, this erratic policy-making is merely annoying to those who must interpret and implement the Legislature's emissions, but in certain fields, it has a real human impact. And nowhere is that more evident than in the treacherous minefield of laws and policies affecting relations between men and women.
The Legislature (and the governor) decree whose interests will have primacy as about 100,000 marriages are dissolved in California each year. The allowable grounds for divorce, the levels of child support and alimony, and the rules governing prenuptial agreements are among the pithy matters that the politicians decide, and it's a rapidly evolving policy area.
The election of more women to the Legislature -- itself largely a product of term limits -- and the major influence that women's rights advocates have achieved within the dominant Democratic Party have tilted the political balance in the war between the sexes toward women in recent years.
A landmark domestic relations policy change occurred when the Legislature imposed tougher standards on child support -- so tough, in fact, that it sparked creation of men's rights groups. They complained that divorced dads, even conscientious ones, are being treated like criminals, subject to having their wages seized arbitrarily and having visitation rights ignored.
In 1996, the men won one, after a fashion, when the Legislature passed and then-Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation declaring alimony to be temporary support aimed at making recipients become self-supporting "within a reasonable period of time." And it would allow their alimony to be terminated if they failed to move toward self-support. Women's rights groups didn't like it, saying it could allow ex-spouses -- women overwhelmingly -- to be hauled into court and threatened with cutoff of their support payments if they didn't return to school or get jobs.
The groups that opposed the new alimony law tried to have it repealed, but could not win as long as Wilson remained governor.
"The only collection of women who oppose this bill are second wives," then-Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl said as she urged a repeal.
In 1999, after Gray Davis succeeded Wilson as governor and Democrats had achieved larger legislative majorities, Kuehl and other women's rights champions in the Legislature pushed through a repeal, which Davis signed.
Last year, Davis and other Democrats delivered another victory to the distaff side of the gender war when they enacted a Kuehl-carried bill that would void any prenuptial agreements unless the spouses were represented by attorneys or waived that right.
The measure was sparked by a state Supreme Court decision upholding the prenuptial agreement signed by the former wife of baseball star Barry Bonds, even though she was not represented by an attorney.
The men won a rare skirmish in the state Assembly on Tuesday when it voted 51-3 to make it easier for men to challenge child-support orders when DNA tests prove that they are not the biological fathers of the children involved.
The measure is backed by men's rights groups, and advocates, including its author, Assemblyman Rod Wright, D-Los Angeles, said it was a matter of fundamental fairness, likening it to DNA tests that free wrongly convicted prisoners. But critics said it would plunge more children into poverty, and Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, said it would resurrect the "age-old double standard."
The Wright bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, and even if it clears that hurdle, an uncertain fate in Davis' hands. He's quite aware that he needs female voters to win re-election.
Yes there was a contract. A contract of marriage. To honor, obey cherish and to stay faithful. My contract stated that I remain loyal to my wife and she to me. That I should do these things because I was swearing before god that I would. That was null and void once she betrayed that said contract and ios liable for damages by the state and by God.
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