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When Larry went to court after
receiving a child support order, he didn't expect problems.
After all, the child in question was white. Larry is black.
"I got a DNA test that excluded me as the
father," Larry says. "The judge refused to consider the DNA
evidence--not to mention the obvious evidence right in front of
him--and made a child support order. He said that the time
period for challenges to paternity had run out. But nobody had
ever served me--I knew nothing about owing money until I got a bill
saying that I owed support and that I was $75,000 in arrears.
If I had known, I would have contested it in a second."
Larry now pays over 40% of his take home pay
in child support and arrearages, and will be paying for the next
13 years. Meanwhile he has a wife and a daughter of his own to
support.
Under current state law, unwed men named in
default judgments have only six months to contest an order
assigning paternity. Other men faced with erroneous paternity
judgments signed paternity declarations under the mistaken
belief that they were the fathers, and had only two years to
contest the ensuing judgment.
The Paternity Justice Act of 2002 (AB 2240),
recently introduced into the California State Assembly by
Assemblyman Rod Wright (D-Los Angeles), is designed to remedy
these injustices by extending the period during which judgments
of paternity may be challenged through genetic testing. The bill
requires courts to vacate paternity judgments which are shown to
be erroneous, thus relieving falsely identified fathers of
further child support.
Erroneously identified fathers often face a
number of obstacles. For one, they are often misled into
believing that they are the children's biological fathers.
Others have not been served or notified, and
are not even aware that they have been named the father of a
child until their wages are garnished. In both cases, the time
period under which they can contest paternity has often run out
before the men have become aware of reasons to challenge it. In
the case of default judgments, men generally bear the burden of
proof and often find it difficult to convince the courts that
they were never served or notified.
Paternity fraud victims' stories often
provoke disbelief. For example, four years ago Air Force Master
Sergeant Ray Jackson was divorced by his wife. Soon afterwards,
he discovered that the three children born during their marriage
had, in fact, been the product of three different extramarital
affairs. Jackson's ex-wife has disappeared with the children,
and Jackson is still paying half his income to support children
who aren't his and whom he'll probably never be allowed to see.
Los Angeles area technical instructor Bert Riddick, along with
his wife and three children, fell
from the
middle-class to homelessness within a few
years of being falsely identified by an old girlfriend as the
father of her child. Until going into hiding last year, Riddick
was paying 60% of his net income in child support and arrears to
the well-heeled ex-girlfriend who defrauded him. He says:
"The courts decide that I have to pay the
child support because it is in the best interest of the child.'
But I wonder which child they're talking about--the child whom
tests have shown is not mine, or the three children who are mine
and who I have to feed and clothe every day. Is taking half of
daddy's money for 18 years in their best interest?"
This column first appeared in the Los Angeles Daily News (3/15/02).
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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