Posted on 12/02/2007 1:42:56 PM PST by Calpernia
WESTBURY, LI (1010 WINS) -- A sperm donor may have to pay child support after the mother's lawyer argued that the man has sent birthday cards and otherwise acted like a father to the teenage child, the donor's lawyer said.
A Nassau County Family Court judge recently blocked the man from seeking a paternity test. The man's lawyer, Deborah Kelly, says the Nov. 16 ruling sets the stage for a magistrate to determine how much her client may owe in support. The parties in the case are listed anonymously.
The man, a doctor, donated sperm to a hospital resident and her female partner in the late 1980s. The child was born in July 1989.
The donor and the women agreed verbally that he wouldn't have any rights in the child's upbringing, according to court documents. But he allowed his name to appear on the child's birth certificate because he felt it was in the child's best interests to have ``an identity,'' court documents say.
The man went on to have contact with the child before the child, the mother and her partner moved out of state in 1993, court documents say. Since then, the donor has spoken to the child by phone and sent money, gifts and letters signed ``Dad.''
``The fact of the matter is that he held himself out as the child's father for 18 years until he asked for DNA testing,'' said the mother's lawyer, Jeffrey Herbst.
But Kelly said her client's gestures of goodwill were being unfairly used against him.
``What's the saying? No good deed goes unpunished,'' she said.
Court rulings have varied in similar cases around the country. In Washington State, the Court of Appeals held in 2004 that a sperm donor isn't obligated to pay child support unless he and the mother have a signed contract saying as much.
But a Pennsylvania judge earlier this year held a sperm donor liable for support for the two children he helped a lesbian couple conceive, noting that the donor had spent thousands of dollars on toys and clothing for the children.
ping
He acted very foolishly.
Because....?
When life mimics morning soap operas.
I can’t imagine how messed up these kids are going to be a decade from now.
Yes, that's the real moral issue, rather than the issue of financial support. Let the kids get scholarships or jobs, if they want to go to college!
The real damage is in conceiving the children knowing that there was no possibility of their having a normal family life, with a mother and father devoted to them. Money doesn't fix everything.
Nor does political correctness.
Fathers should pay for their children.
Political correctness doesn’t fix *anything*!
bump!
And a bump back! This is an important legal issue, and hopefully judgements of this sort will make people less casual about parenthood.
That’ll teach him. Just because you don’t shtup the broad it doesn’t mean that you’re off the hook...
I unfortunately don’t think it is casualness here. These stunts are redefining the legal definitions of parental rights.
There are multiple paths being taken to institute in loco parentis.
http://blog.newyorkcitycommunity.us/2007/10/19/healthy-schools-and-in-loco-parentis.aspx
Excerpt:
In the United States, courts often must determine who the legal parents are among the many adults who might be involved in planning, conceiving, birthing, and raising a child. Judges in several states have seized upon the idea of “psychological” parenthood to award legal parent status to adults who are not related to children by blood, adoption, or marriage. They have done so even over the objection of the child’s biological parent. Advances in the same-sex marriage debate have encouraged group marriage advocates who wish to break open the two-person understanding of marriage and parenthood.
The National Health Education Standards has gone further and envoked in loco parentis by redefining parents as families. Families have been classified as stakeholders. Children’s stakeholders are being identified as any entity that is seen as a resource in a child’s community. The legal definition of stakeholder is a third party who temporarily holds money or property while its owner is still being determined.
http://www.nationalguidelines.org/guideline.cfm?guideNum=0-12
Schools often have insufficient resources to provide a comprehensive and multifaceted continuum of interventions. By having direct contact with families and key informants in the community, schools are better able to identify barriers to student success and well-being and better equipped to develop solutions that overcome these barriers. Schools can enhance home-school links by sharing concerns with families and developing solutions that address students’ unique needs.
In addition to the benefits for students’ education and well-being, students’ families, and school staff, there are reciprocal benefits for community agencies who partner with schools. Businesses, the justice system, community health and safety systems, and others may benefit from a healthier population. Community agencies and organizations that provide services to children and families often gain a more visible profile when they become partners with schools.
Examples of neighborhood stakeholders in student health and well-being are students themselves, as well as their families and teachers. Other school staff, community business owners, police, faith-based institutions, universities and colleges, local health departments, health and mental health service providers, dentists, emergency medical services, educators of first-aid, departments of health, justice, education and social services, and other agencies that serve families have stakes in the well-being of the student population and school staff. Communicate regularly with partners and potential partners in order to learn what each has to offer.
Bump for later. Too much information to assimilate before supper :-).
Too bad you’re not here; we have Cuban pork roast and black beans!
The kid is 18 and presumably moving out of the house soon. Doesn’t child support end at 18? Are they going to make him pay back child support to support a kid no longer being supported by the parents who raised him?
Oy, “It takes a village ...”
Because the state wins either way.If you treat a kid who's not your biological child with any degree of decency you're deemed to have taken on parental responsibility and the courts,in order to preserve that father-like relationship,declares that you,and not the Department of welfare,must support that child.
At the same time if you treat a kid who *is* your biological child like dirt then the courts declare that because he/she *is* your biological child you,and not the Department of Welfare,get to support the child.
So..heads,they win...tails,you lose.
Here's one lesson. Don't make verbal contracts with crazy people.
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