Another Paternity Fraud case.(30% of Paternity tests prove children fathered by other men.)

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.

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?"

re: You have not, and never will hear that from ME. Fathers should support THEIR children regardless of circumstances. )))

You may like to review posts 226, 232, and 237 and decide if a rewrite is in order.

No parentage, means NO OBLIGATION.

It would be no different if the government showed up at my door, and said, "You have a nice home here, we are going to assign some children to you to be raised and supported. Say hello, to Buffy and Spike. Meet your new father, kids!"

No difference whatsoever.

I worded it incorrectly ... Ford was the first Presidential candidate I voted for...

My husband who is all logic and reason and never voted other than Republican since I've known him voted for Carter... go figure!

Not in the least a stretch. You confirmed, with good enthusiasm as appears in the context, that "it's always the woman's fault."

You were replying supportively to an individual who clearly implied that no man should be held responsible for an immoral woman's children, even his own. Check it out. Also, in post 237, I don't hear you objecting.

Another response from a woman.

Women who cheat on their spouses, become pregnant from the affair then lie about it are worse then whores. They are criminals who deserve ever punishment possible under the law. Not only have they broke Gods commandments against adultry, they have abused, used, lied too and committed fraud against their husband and children.

Yes, men who find out, even years later that their child is not biologically theirs should have every legal right to repayment of all financial support as well as damages for years of fraud and abuse they suffered with. They should also be given the full opportunity to have a full relationship with the child. Even going as far as automatically changing custody to the man if that is what he wants.

Bio-Dad should be financially responsible for the children produced during the affair. From the point it can be proven he knew the child was his. Chances are, if these women lied to their children and husbands, they didn't tell the bio-dad he was going to be a father.

What we have here, is a failure to communicate? (slang excluded)

Dont mistake my support for the idea that women decide when, and if they are going to have sex, as a suggestion that men should not support their children.

(whispering)Do you see dead people?

Now, my respect for your sense of outraged justice dwindles when you become juvenile. Once again I start to suspect that these "paternity fraud" threads come from anger and disdain for women (spare me the assurances that you are actively heterosexual) and an uninterest in the welfare of children who have told no lies.

You might go back and reread , and decide to answer 237. Didn't seem to bother you much that some children might go unfed by responsible fathers under that scenario.

I once again point out that in order to garner support for a change in law, calling potential supporters "cows" that should remain "unbought" is highly unpersuasive.

Are you serious? I think your outrage is fake.

If you have never hear the expression "Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free?", they you need to get out more.

I often use humor(whether you think it is funny or not) in my posts. Get over it. You are doing EXACTLY what I described. Try thinking in my posts, and less FEELING, and you might understand me a bit better.

re:Does the word BUDDHAboy mean anything to you? Your Lord, is my 'noun'.

You don't hear me swearing by stray deities, Buddha or Vishnu or whomever. Do mine the same courtesy.

I can handle profanity or bathroom/barnyard/bedroom references, but dislike blasphemy.

Eliminate the presumption of mother custody, and the problem goes away.

That is a few more rungs up the ladder. Right now, I would like to simply remove the "presumption of the husband's paternity", even in the face of a DNA test that proves otherwise.

>>>And regarding your left field off-topic comment on rape....I am of the opinion that it isn't the child's fault so I would give birth. That is just me though. I realize you won't be able to understand having mercy.<<<

You missed the point entirely. Before posting a condescending response, why not adequately read the posting to which you're responding first? Nowhere in that hypothetical were you the proposed mother.

Postings of dubious intellectual merit are like the thirteenth chime of a clock...wrong in and of themselves and casting doubt upon those which preceded them. I'm sorry to say that I see no value in spending further time trying to communicate with you. It's like talking to a brick wall upon which the long list of paternity fraud victimizers is inscribed.

I didn't miss the point. You're off-topic and blatently so, as a rape victim has no bearing on the argument of duties to this 14 year old girl. The point is that you care more for money and for the grown man than for the welfare child, regardless of how you try and spin it otherwise. For me, its the other way around.

Anyone who has read through this thread understands that most of the posters here have compassion and concern for the children involved...,
but do you think it is just that an ex-husband be held legally, and financially responsible for children he did not father, no matter what the circumstances? That is the law today in most states, that the husband is presumed to the father if the children were conceived during the marriage.

When I was in the Navy I witnessed cases where guys would return from a 7 month deployment, to find their wife 4 months pregnant. Guess what? The wife and new boy-friend got the house (sailor makes the payments), car (sailor makes the payments)and child-support, which the Navy would conviently take right out of his paycheck. Do you think this is moral, just, fair? Most of the sailors involved didn't, and they would often end up with a restraining order on them after "acting on their emotions." They would then lose visitation rights.

You're asking the policy of which I'd approve? Clearly a man cannot be expected to maintain support of a household not truly his...once this fact is discovered. Trying to go backwards in time to reclaim past support is not a place I'd go, however, given that during that time the man was also enjoying (in a manner of speaking) his role as father. Not only that, but enforcing past repayment is probably not practical...Unless you can offer a means of reclaiming the money without harming the welfare of the child. For those that insist, may I note that you are attempting to enforce a kind of *debt* on a minor.

I'd be willing to entertain a punishment for the mother, if you could come up with a suitable and workable one. Mostly what I hear is vindictiveness visited on the head of the hapless child.

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