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.
I tend to doubt the Supreme Court will overrule long standing guidelines set forth by the state courts but they might. Contrary to the assertion by some that state support agencies only care about the collection of money, let me say this is palpable nonsense. We used to encourage paternity testing whenever there was any question about parentage. The notion that the people working there are mindless robots who have no sense of justice is ridiculous. The people who feel so strongly about this subject need to address this issue to their legislators and congresscritters. I used to do this all the time. We only enforced the law as it was written and expected to do so.
Hopefully, one of those consequences will be the complete collapse of the feminist movement, which tells women that they have this type of power over men, and absolves them (the woman) from all responsibility.
I would like nothing better, than to see the NOW gang and that dumb b*tch Gloria Allred on tv in total panic when their fraud is exposed for all to see.
This is what the feminist movement hath wrought upon men.
It is unlikely that they will hear it, which might be good, as you can never tell what the swing judges will do. Best thing to do is correct this travesty at the state level. I doubt governors like Greyout would be any help, but maybe other states can start a precedent (as is already being done).
This doctrine would seem to say that some two-bit ho can conceive, then just run down the phone book and pick some schmuck at random to be Instant Dad. And the courts -- those bastions of social equity -- will enforce her decision!
Fraud. Writ LARGE.
See post above yours.
I would guess that cases that end up in dispute are not representative of overall paternity statics.
I make no apologies for the collection of child support monies. A typical employee in the office I worked would collect over $1 million per year in both TANF and non TANF cases and I suspect it may even be greater now. Much of this money was plowed back into the revenue base to offset the TANF money paid out to welfare families. The rest (most of it) was paid to non TANF families.
Again, I say if you don't like the status quo, then get to your legislator/congressperson and insist on the changes you desire. The state employees are trying to make a living just like you make a living and they do what they are required to do under the laws.
Hand me my chain saw and the Agent Orange.
I don't make a living stealing money from people.
And the guards at Auschwitz were just obeying orders.
Actually, the number might be even higher.
My dad is a recently semi-reformed wacko liberal(which helps to explain my own insanity). He is a retired math professor who specialized in probability and statistics. His last few big projects were with a small team or researchers of a similar(liberal) ilk.
While he was working with these folks(for the army, a long study on the reliability of composite material breaking strength in helicopter blades and tank armor), the feminazi-looking researcher on this very PC-looking team related a couple of interesting studies on seperate occasions that were suppressed or discredited because of their results. One had to do with penetration of the AIDS virus into vivisected vaginal tissue(researchers simply could not, under any circumstances, make the virus go into or through tissue from the vaginal wall). That one was suppressed because it would seem to imply that AIDS was not a significant risk to your average heterosexual.
Another study in which she had been involved was an analysis of the results of DNA testing among the families of children requiring tissue transplant. In that one, as she related it to me, among families wherein the child was concieved in wedlock(i.e. born more than nine months into the marriage) the male spouse was found not to be the biological father of the child in a whopping 70+% of the cases. She said the study was discounted summarily by a general consensus of everyone who looked at it, but basically just because the numbers were so shocking. Some potential causes of bias were a sample skewed toward lower-income families and a slightly disproportionate representation of minorities and immigrants(the study took place in southern California). The scary thing was that there was no bias due to the preexistence of paternity disputes, and the numbers were astronomical.
Her reason for relating the latter study was to recommend paternity testing in the custody proceedings for my daughter that were ongoing at the time. My reasons for relating it to those on this forum are to point out that women are not innately saintly, and to illustrate how not only are we force-fed nonsensical pseudo-science to suit The Agenda, but good, solid objective science is often suppressed for the same cause. Only a handful of researchers and their personal aquaintances are aware of the reality of these things.
Anyway....
I have been accused a misogyny before, and at the risk of validating those accusations I want to point to this phenomenon as one indicator of the unique historical situation in which we find ourselves. Women are at a critical point in cultural evolution. They enjoy the benefits of paternalism, but none of its legal or social handicaps. Selfishness, cruelty, abusiveness, deceitfulness and many other vicious qualities sit quite blatantly upon many a pretty face without being perceived as such by men who still see women through the veils of an antiquated feminine mystique.
Women judges and legislators are biased toward women because they see eachother as being on the same team. Male judges and legislators are biased toward women because of an endemic paternalism and, perhaps, an unconcious desire for a pat on the head from Mommy.
Lots of voices in our society are talking to women about their rights among other things, very few are talking to women about their collective and individual resposibilities to themselves, the people around them and society as a whole. It is a truism that rights and responsibilties go hand in hand, but we seem to be raising a generation of women who can only see things from one angle. A mindset like that is called psychopathy when it governs the mind of a man.
The long term consequences of the experience of these few generations will be, I think, more profound than any "backlash" I have heard discussed before. I believe there is a "reality factor" that prevents social conditioning and propaganda from being effective when the propagandists get "greedy" and try to induce for too long beliefs or perceptions that are too far skewed from ordinary principles of truth, justice, etc..., and to frequently contradicted by day-to-day experience. After a critical point is reached, the propaganda only serves to strengthen the opposite belief and to induce a disaffection from the propaganda source.
Essentially, if the world painted for you on TV is too far from the world around you, the reality around you will eventually break the spell, and furthermore confer a sort of immunity to future spell-castings of the same sort. I assert this without proof, and I stand by the "spell" metaphor.
We will see even fewer men willing to marry, and rightly so. Men will generally hold women in a unique contempt, and perceive them as an abusive and tyrannical priviledged class, who has done nothing to earn the priviledge.
The tables will turn in the demand for sex and love. It already has somewhat, but in the future, women will do all the chasing, the sacrificing, etc... for the sake of the love of a man -- something that will be very hard to come by.
Men will more and more say, "Why should die 7 years earlier for her? Why should I slave away to buy her lingerie to wear for the mailman?"
In generations to come, women will have to deal with the reality of a huge percentage of men who hate their own mothers for morally justifiable reasons.
As men begin to collectively pull back the veils of feminine mystique and see the reality of feminine character as it exists commonly in our society, a deep-abiding natural contempt for wickedness will dominate the perception of women by men. Truth is contagious, and this attitude will eventually become the standard. Women will have to learn to live with emotional aloneness because, in their collective social greed,they have gradually moved men into the position of having nothing to gain and everything to lose.
There is a certain number of husbands who have been faithful, gentle, supportive providers for years, only to end up with warts on their genitals and a hefty support payment for the wallpaper hanger's kid. The direction in which society continues to move is only increasing this number. A guy doesn't have to meet too many fellows in such a situation to open his eyes to the reality around him.
In the past, mysogyny as painted by feminism was men collectively saying, "You are incompetent, you must have sex with me to keep your job, I can beat you up." In the future it will take on a different form, "You are a bad person, you ask for things you haven't earned and don't deserve, I do not trust you, I do not like you, I am not your slave, you may not control me, I will not help you." And women have little to say but, "Honest, I'm not like other women, I promise."
And so, for women, the next several generations will look pretty bleak. But maybe that is what is necessary to force the beginnings of virtue among women as something more than a cute pose.
Currently, the suicide ratio during the first year after a divorce is 10 men for each woman.
It will take several generations of humble women to remedy the damage that has been done.
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