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Duped Dads

Posted on | January 27, 2007 | 1 Comment

I have ranted about the problem of Paternity Fraud before, now it a appears Time Magazine has taken a peek at it. A glancing and superficial one, granted, but at least they looked.

Advocates for these so-called duped dads say such men should be treated as victims of fraud and liken the need for paternity-disestablishment amendments to truth-in-lending laws. They point to many an egregious case in which the law’s marital presumption of fatherhood has ended up enslaving a divorced dad, like the Michigan man who proved he had not sired his son but was still ordered to send child-support payments directly to the boy’s biological father, who was granted custody after the mom moved out of his place and left the kid there. Increasingly, policymakers across the country are turning a sympathetic ear to such complaints. Florida last year joined Georgia and Ohio in allowing a man to walk away from any financial obligations regardless of how many years he may have been acting as a minor’s father if he discovers he was deceived into parenthood. Fathers’ rights groups in Colorado, Illinois and West Virginia are pushing for similar legislation that would remove or extend existing time limits for challenging paternity.

Yes, indeed, that makes sense. The duped dad sending money to the bio dad, and the perpetrator mother gone.
(Hat Tip Divorce Law Journal)

In New York, once you accept paternity, you are the father – regardless of the facts.



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Category: Paternity Fraud

Comments

One Response to “Duped Dads”

  1. Anne
    February 1st, 2007 @ 6:02 pm

    Lawyers love finding new ways to make money from other peoples’ pain.

    “These cases get cast as the duped dad vs. the scheming wife,” says Temple University law professor Theresa Glennon, who has examined the changing legal landscape. “This is really about men deserting children they have been parenting.”

    Oh, please. Sending a child support check isn’t parenting. If a woman is benefitting financially by deceiving a man about paternity, she is committing fraud. Period.
    If a man has physically raised the child as its father, and he is divorcing the mother, I believe she should still pay restitution to him or forfeit alimony, if she can not provide witnesses to verify that he knew he was not the biological father. In Arizona the laws have made it so that wives can pretty much rape their husbands into the ground financially and walk away with alimony and child support and a cherry on top, and that sh*t has got to stop. The legal system here is doing nothing but enabling and often creating leeches.
    It’s time they derailed the gravy train.