Oh. And it ain't his "daughter".
Posted on 11/02/2002 4:34:20 AM PST by Libloather
Man Sues After Finding Girl Not His Daughter
Fri Nov 1,10:43 AM ET
MELBOURNE (Reuters) - An Australian man is suing his former partner to recover more than $10,000 he spent on a little girl, for things such as presents, zoo trips and meals, after discovering she was not his daughter, a newspaper said on Friday.
"I want it all back -- every cent for every toy, every blanket, every bit of food," the man, who can't be identified for legal reasons, said.
"I wouldn't have spent all that money had I known five years ago she wasn't my kid," he was quoted saying by the Herald-Sun.
The claims include take-away McDonald's food over five years, four visits to an amusement park, three Barbie dolls, a Pooh Bear play tent, a day of skating, and child support payments.
The Herald-Sun said the man took the action after DNA tests found the girl was not his daughter.
The girl's mother said she was willing to repay the child support payments but that she should not have to pay back anything else.
"She had a good time with him that's the main thing," she was quoted as saying. "I don't think he should carry on too much about it. He should treat it like doing something nice with a friend."
Oh. And it ain't his "daughter".
I do not condone the abuse of this man by the girl's mother. What I am extremely angry about is this man's lack of compassion for the little girl he thought was his daughter. What happens to her now? The tone of the article suggests he has abandoned her emotionally.
He can certainly do this...just as he can try to recoup his financial losses. But what of compassion? We as a society seem so smug and comfortable in our certain superiority to the animal world, yet the abandonment of this child and so many others like her suggests that we have not risen above the law of the jungle.
Thus we are no better than animals. In the animal kingdom, an invading male kills the progeny which are not his...to preserve his own future offspring.
Is this where human society is headed? Is there not a man who would cherish this child as if she were his own?
You don't think a woman knows whether she's had sex in the same month with more than one man? The man sure wouldn't.
In what other fraud case is it a requirement that the plaintiff show not only that he was deceived but that he investigated what clues there were fully enough to ensure that he wasn't being deceived?
You're quite right that the following is a condition of fraud:
[the statement was] (4) Reasonably relied upon by the other party.
However, even if reliance must be "reasonable", what I was asking about was something stronger, which is whether one "must investigate fully enough ensure that he isn't being deceived." It's not a requirement of reasonableness in any but strange circumstances that a plaintiff have done anything so extensive as a thorough investigation.
The latter is unprecedented in non-child support cases, but it is what your description of Georgia law suggested was the law in child-support cases.
So I don't think I'm switching questions. However, you're right that it's better to talk about what the law says, which is "reasonable reliance", so let's do that.
The question is whether it's reasonable for a man to take the declarations of his love partner at face value, even in face of some conflicting evidence. We can be specific. She was pregnant shortly (but not impossibly) after sleeping with the relevant man, he knew there were other guys "around", etc. But still, why should we think these clues are sufficient for a man to know he wasn't the real father for legal purposes, unless the presumption is precisely that women can be relied upon to lie?
Imagine that a man was cheating on his wife, and gave her an incurable venereal disease. If she were to sue him for this (after divorcing him), would it be a defense for him that she "ought to have known" she was running this risk, because he left phone numbers around, or had lipstick on his collar, or even made an appointment at a clinic? Can he say that he's now off the hook, despite making explicit denials to his wife that he was cheating, on the grounds that she ought to have figured out he was lying, given available clues? Is he off of the hook if he reminds her and the court that men often lie about their infidelity?
Let's just say I'm confident no court would give a man anything like the sort of latitude I'm suggesting above-- and rightly so! Why, then, is there such a wide latitude given for women who deceive their partners about paternity, even in the face of conflicting evidence? It's offensive, frankly.
I take it we're agreeing that these are usually cases in which a man didn't know that he wasn't the real father. (Given his legal action, we can safely assume that if he did know from the outset that he wasn't the father he wouldn't have supported the child.) Given that these cases also involve at least less than full disclosure from the woman (about other partners) and often outright lies (No, I never slept with anyone else!) the presumption ought to be against the woman. She ought to have to show that reliance on her was unreasonable, rather than the presumption being on the man or there being no presumption one way or the other.
He is not her father, he has no responsibilities other than that of a 'good neighbor', speaking of which, have you offered to help the girl yet?
Since you are obviously so generous with your time and money for kids who aren't yours, I will help you purchase a ticket so You can take over for this man since you feel so strongly about this child.
Hello?
From my post 230:
1. There nothing in the article that says the man will stop seeing the girl, stop giving her gifts, or stop loving her! NOTHING!
2. There is nothing in the article that says the girl knows there is a lawsuit, much less the details of it!
And I'll add for you:
3. HE IS NOT TRYING TO TAKE ANY TOYS AWAY!
From my post265:
From the article: “The girl's mother said she was willing to repay the child support payments”
When you sue you don’t start with what you want the final compromise to be, you start asking for every $ possible. If he just asked for child support she probably would have said she would only pay back half the child support.
People here [this means you AnAmericanMother] are criticizing him based on what is on an itemized list of damages that the girl will never see or know about, unless the mother tells her, in which case that would be the mans fault of course. (/sarcasm)
Best Wishes. MK
He's not her biological father. To her, he is indeed her father.
Perhaps, but to this child a "father" is somone who you see a couple times a year. She may be no more attatched to him than a normal 5-year old would be to an uncle living 2000 miles away. If she never saw him again she might not even notice. There is just not enought information given in the article to know one way or the other.
No question the divorce rates for America are ridiculous. I was referencing the 1 in 10 number that children are not the biological offspring of their "fathers". That to me is a sad statistic for the entire family, the children as well as adults.
That's not what I gathered from the article.
You gather a lot of things from the article that are not infact in it. Examples:
Post 144: "I bet the little girl is feeling wonderful right now knowing that the man who pretended to be her daddy now wants to take it back."
Post 147: That the man wants to punish or is punishing the girl.
Post 279: "This is a man who would rather destroy a little girl's life than accept his responsibilities."
From where in the article did you draw these conclusions?
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