Men wage battle on 'paternity fraud'

[Mark Fournier]

Martin Kasindorf
<a href=http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-12-02-paternity-usat_x.htm>USA TODAY</a>
December 2, 2002

<center><b>Men wage battle on 'paternity fraud'</b></center>

An acid sense of betrayal has been gnawing at Damon Adams since a DNA test showed that he is not the father of a 10-year-old girl born during his former marriage.

"Something changes in your heart," says Adams, 51, a dentist in Traverse City, Mich. "When she walks through the door, you're seeing the product of an affair."

But Michigan courts have spurned the DNA results Adams offered in his motions to stop paying $23,000 a year in child support. Now, Adams is lobbying the state Legislature for relief and joining other men in a national movement against what they call "paternity fraud."

In almost a dozen states, men have won the right to use conclusive genetic tests to end their financial obligations to children they didn't father. But women's groups and many public officials responsible for enforcing child support are battling the movement, which they say imperils children.

Most states design their family laws to protect what they call "the interests of the child." That means siding with the child's financial and emotional needs and against supposed fathers who want to avoid paying for tricycles and braces.

Taxpayers also have a big stake in child support collections, which have grown to$18 billion annually and cover 20 million children. If men who are paying child support no longer have to and authorities can't find the real fathers, welfare agencies will get the bill for family assistance.

Many men who feel deceived by a woman are in no mood to accept a legal system that doesn't recognize DNA science in such cases. "It's like they are saying, 'Let your wife cheat on you, have children by other men, divorce you, and now you have to pay for it all,' " says Air Force Master Sgt. Raymond Jackson, 43. California judges won't consider tests he says prove that the three children of his former 10-year marriage were fathered by other men.

<b>Fraud, mistakes</b>

There are signs of substantial fraud or mistakes in identifying fathers in child support disputes. The American Association of Blood Banks says the 300,626 paternity tests it conducted on men in 2000 ruled out nearly 30% as the father.

The legal doctrines raising barriers to DNA testing on paternity questions are formidable. In 30 states, married men face a 500-year-old legal presumption that any child born during a marriage is the husband's. The concept, based in English law, is aimed at preventing children from being branded illegitimate. Nebraska's Supreme Court ruled last week that an ex-husband who is not a child's father cannot sue the mother to recover child support payments.

The law is more flexible for men who admit to fathering a child out of wedlock but then change their minds or who are named by the mother. But they have only brief opportunities to deny paternity. Florida allows a year after a child support order, California two years after a birth.

Many unwed fathers paying child support have never admitted paternity. A 1996 federal welfare law requires a woman to name a father — no questions asked — when she applies for public assistance. A court summons can be mailed to the man's last known address. Many men don't get the notice. The result: The paychecks of 527,224 men in California, for example, are being docked under "default" judgments of paternity that can't be contested after six months.

Men who urge use of DNA cite a precedent: DNA's increasing impact in murder and rape cases.

"Think of it. I can get out of jail for murder based on DNA evidence, but I can't get out of child support payments," says Bert Riddick, 42, a computing teacher in Carson, Calif.

Riddick is paying $1,400 a month for a teenage girl born out of wedlock whom he's never met. Strapped, he and his wife are living with in-laws. Their three children, ages 3 to 11, cram into one room. He lost his driver's license for missing support payments and rides a bus 75 minutes to work.

Gradually, legislators are reshaping paternity law. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Virginia now permit ex-husbands and out-of-wedlock fathers to end child support through DNA. Maryland has made the same change via court decisions.

Colorado, Illinois and Louisiana grant relief only to ex-husbands, allowing them to offer genetic proof. Texas allows ex-husbands four years from a birth to disprove paternity and gives unwed fathers unlimited time. A sweeping bill that would authorize married and unmarried fathers to offer DNA evidence is working its way through the New Jersey State Assembly.

Carnell Smith, 41, an engineer in Decatur, Ga., who was getting nowhere in challenging a support decree, started a group called U.S. Citizens Against Paternity Fraud that lobbied for the law Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes signed in May. The slogan on the Web site of Smith's group (www.paternityfraud.com): "If the genes don't fit, you must acquit." Smith is back in court and says, "I fully intend to be one of the first people to be released."

Pending in Vermont is the toughest bill of all. It would make a mother's knowingly false allegation of fatherhood a felony that could put her behind bars for up to two years and fine her up to $5,000. "A woman almost always knows who the father is, and if she puts down the wrong person knowingly and it's costing him money, it's just plain fraud," says state Rep. Leo Valliere, a Republican, the bill's sponsor.

Men's rights groups aren't advancing everywhere. California Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a bill in September that was opposed by women's organizations. It would have given men two years after discovering they weren't the father to produce the DNA evidence to prove it. Florida paternity fraud bills died this year. A package of bills passed the Michigan House 102-0 but is stalled in the Senate.

<b>'Dump the child'</b>

Some analysts say laws need revising but DNA shouldn't be decisive. "Some people want to dump the child and say biology is all that matters, not relationships," says Jack Sampson, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin. Carol Sanger, a family law professor at Columbia University in New York, says the law should be more generous to men who may not even know a child than to dads who have been living with the kids they didn't father.

"Families are more complicated than who's biologically related to whom," says Valerie Ackerman, staff director for the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland. "If there has been a relationship between a father and child, the man can't just abdicate the responsibility that he's taken on."

Supporters of current law say the interests of the child should trump a man's concern for his wallet. "The other guy is somewhere over the hill and long gone," says Jenny Skoble, an attorney at the Harriet Buhai Center for Family Law in Los Angeles. "If it comes down to whether the only (available) father is going to be on the hook to pay money or this kid is going to be in the situation of having no father, I'd say we have to put the child first."

Men who want relief say it's a matter of equity. "DNA equals truth," says Patrick McCarthy, 41, a Hillsborough, N.J., package courier. After paying for 13 years to support a girl he denies fathering, McCarthy co-founded New Jersey Citizens Against Paternity Fraud. The group has put up nine billboards supporting the pending bill in New Jersey. The ads depict a pregnant woman and ask, "Is it yours? If not, you still have to pay!"

"Obviously, there's more to fatherhood than genes," McCarthy acknowledges. "However, to pay support on a non-biological offspring should be an individual choice, not ordered by the courts." Adams says he's willing to directly aid the child he'd thought was his but doesn't want to give his ex-wife any more cash.

Trouble could be minimized if all children were DNA-tested at birth or at the time of divorce, says Geraldine Jensen, president of the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support. She says maternity wards should distribute pamphlets telling men, "Get tested now if you have any questions, because doing it later will disrupt this child's life."

[Mark Fournier]

DNA paternity testing will be as significant to men as birth control was to women, but it will be adamantly opposed because it represents a fundamental change in the 'battle of the sexes' and it undermines women's ablility to arbitrarily assign paternity. The undermining of the ability to assign paternity is a loss of real power for women so it will be fought tooth and nail.

DNA proof of paternity alters the validity of the courts needing to rely on the belief the mother knows who the father is and the trust she will tell the courts the truth. The resistance against the introduction of reliable DNA information into the system speaks directly to the motives of those who oppose it.

[sophrosyne]

I fully support the use of DNA testing to discover the identity of each and every child's father. Not only does the father deserve to know but the child certainly does as well. IMHO it should be a routine test administered at birth to validate the official birth certificate. DNA testing is becoming more routine, cheaper, and accurate by the day and I hope more people avail themselves of this technology.

Supporting women's rights does not mean supporting liars and frauds. As a woman I am thoroughly disgusted and insulted by any woman who deliberately lies about the paternity of her children. Such persons prove themselves to be unfit parents by such actions.

[Canadian Rebel Alliance]

yup I myself was married and one child was mine in the other was not and guess what the first one was not mine and he was born 10 months after we were married. but i'm still paying for both 1200.00 a month because I am on the birth certificate even though the DNA says he's not mine.

[sophrosyne]

As I understand it, the law currently states that if the husband assumes paternity of an infant born to his wife during the marriage, then this paternity remains legally binding even if the genetics say otherwise.

This law is ridiculous, went out with notions like the flat earth, and should be changed to reflect reality. As it is the law furthers a fraud against a person (the betrayed husband). As I understood it the law is not supposed to uphold an illegal act against another person yet...

Personally I feel you've suffered a great injustice.

[Mark Fournier]

As it is the law furthers a fraud against a person (the betrayed husband).

The current laws are based on the assumption the mother knows who the father really is, yet when DNA testing proves the mother has committed a variety of frauds and has given false evidence to courts of law concerning paternity, the mother faces no legal jeopardy for breaking the law. And worse, the victim of the fraud gains nothing from the exposure of the fraud perpetrated against him. Even though it has been proven he is not the father, he must live as if the proof had never been presented. He is still financially responsible for another man's child, a man who is required to take no financial responsibility at all.

The message to men is:

If you want to reproduce on the cheap impregnate married women (other than your wife). It's free, even if the truth comes out some other guy has to pay for everything.

[sophrosyne]

the mother faces no legal jeopardy for breaking the law.

In my opinion, it'd be rather hard to prove that the mother intentionally lied. Unless there were circumstances that made it very clear that the mother intentionally lied (such as conceiving during a time period when her husband was absent) it'd be very difficult to prove that she really did know for sure what the paternity was. In cases where it's clear that the mother would have known for sure, I'd support punitive action.

the victim of the fraud gains nothing from the exposure of the fraud perpetrated against him.

This is something I am really angry about. The betrayed husband (or partner) should have legal recourse, to not only recoup any $$$ they paid out as the result of fraud, but $$$ for pain and suffering.

Pretty nasty stuff. The laws should be changed. I would have no issues with DNA testing made routine at birth to validate the birth certificates. Only those who have something to hide would protest such measures. Why protect the liars and frauds? Make it honest.

[Boydfish]

Myself, having sorted thru and around this type of issue personally, have this suggestion:

The DNA test should release a parent from financial responsibility with the following conditions:

1) The defrauded father who was making the payments only if she refuses or cannot name the actual father.
2) If the mother names the actual father and the DNA test proves that they are indeed the father, the biological father is then on the hook to refund the money already paid to the defrauded father, as well as future payments.

By going to this system, the mother would only be on the hook if she refused to name the actual father, meaning that it shifts from being a financial dispute between the "defrauded father" and the "biological father".

The beauty of this model is that, generally speaking, the kind of women who swing open the barn doors for just any cowboy, regardless of the marital status of the barn, are pretty willing to sacrifice any one or thing for themselves, so they'd be turning the father over with no hesitation just to protect themselves.

[Mark Fournier]

Kathy Boccella
<a href=http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/4797684.htm>Philadelphia Inquirer</a>
December 23, 2002

<center><b>Men seek 'paternity fraud' law
Many must pay support for children who aren't theirs.
A N.J. bill up for a vote would change that.</b></center>

Patrick McCarthy founded New Jersey Citizens Against Paternity Fraud after he found out that he still had to pay for child support, even though his teen daughter was not biologically his.

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.

"I cried. I got angry, not toward the children but toward my wife," he said.

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?"

[Humble Opinion]

Paternity lawsuits: One of the less-minor symptoms of our dying culture.

In days gone by, but still within living memory, a manly man would bite the bullet and raise as his own, a child who was fathered as a result of an illicit affair by his wife. Even though the paternity issue might (and usually did) become evident as the child grew.

Just as a womanly woman would stick with her husband through an illicit affair in which he might become entangled.

It wasn’t perfect. But that’s just the way it was. And it worked a lot better than the diluted mish-mash we call marriage today.

Marriage was: “For better or for worse ‘til death do us part”.

And the “for better or for worse” part worked both ways.

But the increasingly influential cliques and claques of wimps and harridans of today are neither manly men nor womanly women.

That’s how cultures die with a whimper. Not enough manly men and womanly women to keep it alive.

Ol’ Tom Humble.

[Mark Fournier]

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.

Yes, it is that simple. I shouldn't have to pay for someone else's kid and no one else should have to pay for mine.