Free Republic

Campaigners say the true rate of paternity fraud - the intentional misidentification of a child's biological father - remains unknownMen are being left heartbroken after investing time, resources, love and energy into raising children they believed were theirs - only to find out it was all a lie. This breach of trust not only impacts the men who were falsely led to believe they were fathers but also deeply hurts the children involved and others connected to the situation. Paternity fraud refers to the deliberate misidentification of a child's biological father. One of the most shocking aspects of this issue...

DETROIT (WXYZ) - Carnell Alexander is a wanted man. The reason? He refuses to pay child support for a child that is proven to not be his. As a result, a warrant has been issued for his arrest. 7 Action News told you about Carnell Alexander in October. He said he was looking for help clearing up a terrible mistake. Alexander says he learned about the paternity case against him during a traffic stop in Detroit in the early 90s. The officer told him he is a deadbeat dad, there was a warrant out for his arrest. “I knew I...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The State of Michigan is ordering a Detroit man to pay tens of thousands of dollars, or go to prison. The reason? He owes back child support for a child that everyone agrees is not his. "I feel like I’m standing in front of a brick wall with nowhere to go," said Carnell Alexander. He says he learned about the paternity case against him during a traffic stop in Detroit in the early 90s. The officer told him he is a deadbeat dad, there was a warrant out for his arrest. “I knew I didn’t have a child, so I...

Online sellers are marketing positive pregnancy tests as ‘pranks’.The products, which sell for £4.99, show two lines or a plus sign indicating a positive result.One eBay listing reads: ‘Have fun pranking friends and family with this positive test :)’However, another warns: ‘These are meant for adult humour only and not to be used to cause distress or tension.’There is even a website called FakeABaby.com which sells ‘personalised fake ultrasounds’ – in 2D and 3D.

One of my first jaw-dropping experiences in the fathers’ rights arena came back in 1999. I was researching the phenomenon of men who had learned after the fact - and sometimes long after the fact - that they’d fathered a child. I was interested in what happened to their parental rights if a mother kept a man’s child secret from him. I was astonished to learn that the rights of such a dad could vanish into thin air. The rule in many states was that, since he hadn’t actively cared for the child, he had no more claim to it....

"Given the unusual facts of this case, and recognizing the inherent, equitable rights of biological parents who are deprived of parenting through no fault of their own, the grant of joint custody to Trevor cannot prevent Cahill from going forward with his paternity action." That’s the Supreme Court of Kentucky writing in this case (Leagle, 6/17/10). Let me repeat the key words: “recognizing the inherent, equitable rights of biological parents who are deprived of parenting through no fault of their own…” Let me be clear; those words have the power to blaze trails into the law governing paternity fraud and...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently ran articles on a case that should outrage any fair-minded person. Georgia man Frank Hatley was in a Cook County jail for over a year for failure to pay child support. However, DNA tests proved that the child in question was not biologically his. He had never been married to or even cohabiting with the boy’s mother. The two had a brief affair and when the mother had the baby in 1987, she told Hatley that the baby was his. A couple of years later, the mother applied for and received public assistance. The state...

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A Georgia man who spent a year in jail for nonpayment of child support -- despite the fact he has no children -- has been cleared of the debt, his attorney said Tuesday. Frank Hatley, 50, spent 13 months in jail for being a deadbeat dad before his release last month. A judge ordered him jailed in June 2008 for failing to support his "son" -- a child who DNA tests proved was not fathered by Hatley.

There was never going to be a good time. But when the truth finally emerged, it couldn’t have been at a more inopportune moment. Mark Webb was driving to work at eight in the morning when his wife Lydia rang.   ‘I was in the fast lane of the M4 heading towards Reading,’ he recalls. ‘I picked up the call on the hands-free and said, “Hi, what’s the problem?” because Lydia wouldn’t normally call so early.  She said, “I’ve got something I need to tell you. You’re not the father of Elspeth. Dave Mottram is.” ’It was a shattering...

"Mothers are being forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars to men who paid child support over decades but were wrongly named as fathers....Ken Rodgers obtained orders for the repayment of $60,000 after making child-support contributions for a decade to a woman who refused to send him even a photograph of his alleged child... "The money is being garnished from mothers' incomes in the same way that payments are taken from fathers." Some good news, particularly given how badly paternity fraud cases usually go. ... read more

During her divorce proceedings, Bonnie repeatedly claimed that Doug Richardson was the father of her child, but the child told Doug that Bonnie stated that Abraham Flores was his real father. The court refused Doug's request for a continuance to obtain counsel to assist in contesting paternity. 1 The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed. 2 A paternity test excluded Doug as a possible father of the child. 3 Bonnie resumed living with Abraham, but Doug was forced to pay child support into the household of the child's real father. Later, Bonnie and Abraham broke up with a formal change of...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (CNN) -- Francisco Rodriguez owes more than $10,000 in back child support payments in a paternity case involving a 15-year-old girl who, according to DNA results and the girl's mother, is not his daughter. Francisco Rodriguez is fighting for leniency in his paternity case. "It's not right. I'm not the father, " he said. Rodriguez, who is married with two daughters and a son from his wife's previous marriage, is fighting for leniency. "It's not right. I'm not the father, " he said at a recent court hearing. He says he knew nothing about the other girl...

The Taron James paternity fraud case is one of the most egregious examples of the abuses the child support enforcement system visits upon men. In my co-authored column Defrauded Veterans Have Mixed Emotions on Veterans Day (Daily Breeze [Los Angeles], 11/11/03)[http://www.glennsacks.com/veteran_feels_mixed.htm], I wrote: "For Torrance photographer Taron James, a decorated veteran of Operation Northern Watch, Veterans Day always brings mixed emotions. "James enlisted in the Navy at age 20 in the days leading up to the first Persian Gulf War, and carried out hazardous reconnaissance missions behind Iraqi lines in the war's aftermath. "He earned four service medals and three...

SB 56, the new Colorado paternity fraud bill, addresses the dilemma faced by men who discover that the children they are paying child support for are not biologically theirs. The bill would allow “duped dads” to terminate their support obligations by utilizing DNA evidence. In a recent Rocky Mountain News column, Editorial Page Editor Vincent Carroll labels these men “the picky type whose parental love depends on a genetic link” and says they seek to throw their nonbiological children “overboard with a minimum of fuss.” Carroll does have a point--SB 56 allows the duped dad to sever financial ties between...

A Florida Supreme Court case raises fundamental questions about the nature of fatherhood and legal responsibilities. Sixteen months after his divorce, Richard Parker made a devastating discovery. A DNA test revealed that his 3-year-old son had been fathered by someone else. Mr. Parker immediately filed a lawsuit claiming fraud by his apparently unfaithful ex-wife. He took his case all the way to the Florida Supreme Court. Last week, the Florida justices ruled 7-0 against him. They said that Parker must continue to pay $1,200 a month in child support because he had missed the one-year postdivorce deadline for filing his...

LITTLE ROCK Even though a paternity test ruled out Anthony L- Parker as the father of a child in a child-support dispute, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled today he still has to pay support owed the mother before he took the test. The opinion, written by Associate Justice Donald L- Corbin, says state law and prior court cases make it clear that an "acknowledged father" cannot be relieved of past-due child support. Associate Justice Robert L. Brown wrote in a dissent that the opinion reached "a grossly unfair result." In her original ruling, McGowan wrote that forcing Parker to pay...

Child support enforcement programs are supported by all sides of the political spectrum, from women’s advocates on the left to traditionalists on the right. While this popularity is sometimes understandable, it has also allowed glaring and inexcusable abuses to fester and grow. Of these, none is more egregious than when men are forced to pay 18 years of child support for children who are not theirs, and who in many cases they’ve never even met. In “The Innocent Third Party: Victims of Paternity Fraud,” a new article in the American Bar Association's Family Law Quarterly, Washington DC attorney Ronald K....

NEW YORK -- Contending that women have more options than they do in the event of an unintended pregnancy, men's rights activists are mounting a long shot legal campaign aimed at giving them the chance to opt out of financial responsibility for raising a child. The National Center for Men has prepared a lawsuit -- nicknamed Roe v. Wade for Men -- to be filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Michigan on behalf of a 25-year-old computer programmer ordered to pay child support for his ex-girlfriend's daughter. The suit addresses the issue of male reproductive rights, contending that lack...

A former Broward County man has been ordered to continue to pay child support for a child he did not father. He said his wife cheated on him; she denies it.Richard Parker said he never suspected that his wife had been cheating on him when she got pregnant seven years ago.When the Hollywood couple divorced in 2001, he agreed to pay her $1,200 a month in child support.But less than two years later, when his son was 5, he says he learned the awful truth: The boy he had raised as his own wasn't his.Parker sued his ex-wife, Margaret Parker,...

High Point, NC -- We all know the stories about deadbeat parents. Well, Billy Mason is not a deadbeat dad, he's not even a dad to one particular child. But, he still has to pay for a child that's not his. Billy Mason says he was 15 at the time he went before a Guilford County judge on a child support case and said, "Didn't know anything about them kind of laws." "The judge asked me if I was the father of the child. Yeah I'm the father. That was my girlfriend at the time. She was pregnant. I just...