Posted on 07/29/2010 12:29:32 PM PDT by fathers1
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. The fact that the mother had intentionally deprived him of the ability to do that often made no difference to courts.
So I had lengthy conversations with a number of those dads, one of whom lived in Lompoc, California. He’d had a one-night stand with a woman 16 years previously. They both lived in the same community, but she decided he didn’t need to know about it when she became pregnant and gave birth to his daughter. Then she started receiving AFDC payments (now TANF) from the state which were required to be reimbursed by the father. Fifteen years later, the dad received a letter from the State of California saying (a) he had a daughter and (b) he owed the state over $40,000. This was shortly after he’d gotten married. He had to get a second mortgage on his house to pay off the state.
This case is very much the same, but in fact much worse (WXYZ, 7/8/10). This time it’s the State of Michigan that’s suing Gary Harper for AFDC payments made to a woman named Dorothy Hoose. She had a son in 1988 and named Harper as the dad. There’s just one problem, though; he’s not.
But the State of Michigan isn’t interested in technicalities like who the actual father is. It’s known for many years that Harper is not the dad and, as far as I can tell, lifted nary a finger to find out who is. That’s because it’s got Harper on its line and the hook is set. Why go after another fish when you’ve already got one reeled in?
You see, when Hoose named Harper as the dad, he was in prison. According to Michigan law, the state has to pay for a DNA test for any inmate for whom it seeks to establish paternity. The state knew Harper was in the joint because a Friend of the Court sent correspondence there about his case. But it never offered him the genetic testing.
After he got out, he didn’t have the $500 it would have taken at the time to determine whether he was the dad or not. He didn’t do the test until years later, when he had the money. That test proved he wasn’t the dad, but it was too late. His window of opportunity for disproving his paternity had closed. That’s one of those technicalities the state is interested in.
So as of now, Harper’s on the hook for $22,500, down from the $50,000 the state claimed at first. He’s got an attorney, Susan Pushman, who says that the state’s failure to provide DNA testing when Harper was inside means it can’t complain that he didn’t do it on his own when he got out. If Michigan had done what it was obligated to do, it would have known Harper isn’t the father, is her argument. The case is pending.
The “child” in question is now 22 years old. Perhaps oddly, he and Harper have gotten to know and like each other pretty well. That’s a positive development in an otherwise tawdry affair.
It’s worth asking why the State of Michigan has expended such effort in trying to bankrupt a man it knows has no responsibility for Hoose’s son. After all, Harper has been trying to get his life back together after his time in prison, and he’s done a pretty good job of that. But if the state has its way, it’ll tear down whatever he’s built. Nice.
What truly escapes me is why state welfare authorities don’t just ask Hoose who the father is, do DNA testing on him and, if she’s right this time, demand payment. What’s the problem with getting the right man and letting the wrong one go? What state interest is served by soaking a man who’s not the father and letting the man who is go free? One of the points of child support is that he who fathers a child should be financially responsible for it. In Harper’s case, the State of Michigan has it exactly backwards.
One more reason for young males to remain single. Family courts are not interested in the equities of the situation.
Right.
And none of their problems are their fault.
The man in jail? Was framed, right.
Maybe these guys weren’t the father. But they lived loosely. One night stands? Only if you want to pay some skank $500 a month for the next 18 years.
I remember a case where the man had been paying child support for years and years.
Even though the child had died some years back.
He stopped paying when he finally found out.
Too late. He never recouped a dime of the overpaid $$$.
Thanks to corrupt lawyers (redundant I know) who become elected officials and judges we no longer have a justice system but legal system and they are 2 completely different animals.
When the weight of government abuse is used on individuals, other than climbing to the top of a tower in Texas, very little can be done.
Here’s a story a little removed from that. I won’t use names but the details are true.
There was a young woman who joined the navy and at the age of 18, she was sent overseas. While stationed at a naval base, she met a marine and fell in lust.
When she became pregnant, she left the navy and the father of her child. She returned to her parents and when the child was born, the father was listed on the birth certificate and the child was given her maiden name.
When the child was eight or nine months old, his mother took him back to her home town where she became reinvolved with a divorced man with two boys. At that time, she sent for a copy of the birth certificate, requesting changes. The first change was the name of the father. The birth father was removed, and her paramor was listed. The last name of the son was changed from her maiden name to her paramor’s last name.
Years later, after a second child and a divorce, the father of the second child was ordered to pay child support, but the woman didn’t want to saddle him with child support for her first child, since she had manipulated the birth certificate.
More years later. The first born of the woman joined the army, while the second born was treated with all the respect due the first child. Second child got child support, braces, contacts, etc. First child was denied contact with his birth father until time for graduation from boot camp.
Because of this woman, her first-born son was denied his rights as a child and young man, to know his father and be cared for by him. As a side note: The father was more than willing to pay child support and set up visitation.
The rest of the story is this: He is married, now, and he doesn’t ever have to worry about being denied anything by his mother ever again. But you can bet he will be an excellent daddy.
If I live to be 100, I will never understand women. And I are one.
Shouldn’t there be a statute of limitations on paternity. If you have a one night stand with a woman, who would want to find out 15 or 20 years later they had a child?
Hey, if it works for Raoul Moat.....
No one said their problems are not their fault. But why should he have to pay when it is proven he is not the father? Any way you look at it it’s wrong to make these guys pay. The women lied, the state knows they lied , but they still pursue the wrong men.
When Harper was served with Order to Show Cause and Petition to establish paternity, he should have answered. An answer coming from a prison ,hand written in pencil on toilet paper will be read by any Judge in America , if for the novelty alone. By allowing a default he da baby daddy , until set aside.
Half stories can diminish the real struggle for the rights of biological fathers, almost as much as false allegations of racism harm civil rights for the truly aggrieved.
“Today is my daughter’s 18th birthday.......
I’m so glad that this is my last child support payment.
Month after month, year after year, those payments!
I called my daughter to come over to my house, and when she got there, I said to her, “I want you to take this last check over to your Mom’s house; You tell her that this is the last check she’s ever going to get from me, then I want you to come back here and tell me the expression she had on her face.”
So my girl took the check over to her. I was so anxious to hear what the ex had to say and how she took it.
As my girl walked through the door, I said, “Well now .. what did she have to say?”
“She told me to tell you that you aren’t my Dad.”
I could explain it to you. But you wouldn’t accept it.
Lets just say I hope you are not like one of these stupid young men in this story. Or a thousand other stories that play out every day in family court.
“It’s wrong to make these guys pay.” No, these guys wanted to play, now they must pay.
“Men are routinely screwed over in paternity suits. Nothing new.
But you need to come up with better examples than these two losers for anyone to care.
Anytime a man can’t keep his pants zipped up, he invites this kind of trouble.”
Maybe I am missing something, but I didn’t see anything in the story that indicated the second man ever had sex with the woman involved. Maybe he did, but that information is not contained in the story. And it wouldn’t be the first time a woman named a man she never slept with as the putative father.
Bullshiite!!You as a conservative, one who is for limmited govt, keeping govt out of our lives, really? You are hypocrite. I understand the whole morality issue here, but govt has zero business legislating morailty. What the state is doing is wrong period, end of story. What you think about these men’s morals has no bearing on the state being wrong here. Were these guys moraly loose? Yes they were, but they did nothing illegal. Therin lies the rub. The state needs to do the right thing here.
First thing I would do if I were a man who got such a letter was demand a DNA TEST...
Slow down, Ace. I can see you are getting hot. Your typing gets worse as your blood pressure increases.
Since when does the government have no business legislating morality? Governnments have been doing that since the dawn of time. Currently our government is passing laws, and even selecting SC justices that are anathema to your sense of morality and mine.
Drugs, gay sex, abortion, porn... These are all moral issues, are they not?
Unless you are an anarchist libertarian, you do want a government that speaks to these moral and social issues.
So you do want a government that legislates morality.
So calm down.
Not necessarily.
One could do what the OldPossum did many moons ago: get a vasectomy. About a week or so after the operation one takes a test and there is then proof that paternity is not possible.
On the other hand, if you want to stay "sperm active" and invite such trouble, well, that's another option.
Yes I did get a little heated, but it really gets me when I see a state do this even when they have the proof the man they are going after is not the right guy. Sorry for the hypacrite comment. It’s been a long week. All in all it was a good debate.
In one passage of the book, Solzhenitsyn relates the case of a local office which was behind on their quota of deportees to the forced labor camps. Guess how they filled the quota when an elderly couple stops by to request assistance in looking after a deportee's children?
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