If this Op-Ed piece is to be believed, a man can be legally held to be the father of a child under California law, based solely on his having been identified as such by the mother, without his own knowledge. And that there is a statute of limitations on how long it can be challenged, even with DNA evidence. So that if he doesn’t find out about it until after the statute of limitations has run out, no power on earth can save him from full paternal responsiblity for a child that he has absolutely no connection to. This is - if true - a Kafkaesque miscarriage of justice.
OTOH, it seems so preposterous that it’s hard to believe it is actually true. Anyone know anything about it? (Also, what about other states?)
I don’t know about California, but I can tell you that in Florida, a child conceived during a marraige is the financial responsibility of the husband regardless of whether the child is biologically his or not.
My friend got divorced because his wife was cheating on him and got pregnant by her lover, it didn’t matter one bit during the divorce proceedings and he now pays child support for the other mans child as well as alimony to his ex-wife. The three of them (his ex-wife, her lover and their child) live comfortably in a nice apartment while he has had to move back in with his mom because the alimony and child support payments are killing him.
Several lawyers, several years, and thousands of dollars later, he has been told that there is nothing he can do about it. Florida law says legally the child is his and he has to pay for it.
You have to remember that most of these laws were written before we had reliable paternity tests or DNA testing. So, back then, it was often the case that paternity could be neither proven nor disproven. So the law made assumptions, such that the children of a marriage were the children of the two people married. Since then, the law has not kept pace with medical testing.
Well I can understand that in the case of paternal assumption. Which is also horribly wrong these days, but at least you can see how it got there. But the implication of the Op-Ed that I cited is that the mere assertion of a woman - at least if uncontradicted - is all it takes to become the official father of a child. And he can’t necessarily contradict it because he may not even know about it until it is too late.
Consider the possiblities. Some bimbo has a kid, names some random guy - say, Bill Gates - as father, waits a few years for the statute of limitations to run out, and shows up demanding child support.
There has too be more to this … at least I hope so …
Apparently, Florida law is that it does not matter if the initial assertion that he was the father was untrue - what matters is if the mother knew it was untrue at the time, and this guy failed to establish that.
What I don’t understand is that my impression was that the basis for child support is an obligation from parent to child - not to the other parent. So I don’t see why the other parent’s venality is a factor at all.
OTOH, maybe the law happens to be that an agreement perpetuated by fraud is worse than one perpetuated by error, regardless of whose fraud or error. So that if I enter into an arrangement with A based on fraud by B I can get out of it, but not if I enter into it based on an innocent but incorrect statement by B. Here, the “agreement” is accepting paternity.
It does seem in these cases, though, that the law is ass, however you look at it.
Up front, I’m, not a lawyer, so I don’t expect anyone to take this as gospel:
Florida is not unique in treating a cuckolded husband as legal father of his cheating wife’s children. English common law held, centuries before the U.S. existed, that all children conceived and delivered by a married woman were presumed to be the children of her husband, and had all the rights of ANY natural child.
So, even if an English farmer was convinced that his oldest son wasn’t really his (maybe he bore a striking resemblance to the town butcher), that boy was presumed by the law to be his son, and as eldest son, he was entitled to inherit the farm when his “father” died.
Obviously, such laws were enacted long before anyone knew about DNA. But the presumptions of English common law, regarding paternity, are STILL the presumptions shared by the laws of nearly every U.S. state (Lousiana MAY be different, since they’ve never followed the traditions of English common law).
A single man who’s falsely named as the father of a child can submit to lab tests, prove he’s not the father, and escape liability for child support payments. But a married man has no recourse, in most states, if his children aren’t biologically his.
True, as previously noted. But in this case, they married after the pregnancy. His legal position as the father is not based on the paternal assumption, but based on the fact that he accepted paternity at some point, and failed to subsequently prove outright fraud.
I am actually feeling ill reading this thread. Are you guys for real? I mean, I know the justice system here is messed up, but that really takes the cake.
“Yes your honor, I discovered after 10 years of marriage that my wife has cheated on my with 20 different men and all three kids are not even mine. My life as i know it is over and I am in agony.”
“Oh, that’s too bad, and by the way you will have to pay for the three children your x wife conceived out of wedlock with other men, tough luck.”
Can it really be that bad? So the child needs to be provided for…how about the brilliant logic of finding the real father (you know, the guy that is responsible?) and making him pay support? There are lots of kids that need fathers and financial support…shall we just start taking names out of a hat at random and assigning them to passing men? Truely, truely sickening.
There was an infamous “60 Minutes” piece a couple years ago about this. A local DA went haywire to collect child support from “deadbeat dads” and all hell broke loose. A lot of guys got stuck paying child support in the most ludicrous circumstances. E.g., a guy has the same name as the father. The DA sends a letter to his old employer’s address. He never gets the letter. Default unappealable judgement found against him. Now they look him up and slap him with child support. DNA tests prove he isn’t the father. Other evidence show it’s the other guy with the same name. Doesn’t matter.
Caused a big stink but I don’t know if anything was done about it.
Here, I think, is a false dilemma - the child’s welfare versus truth and justice.
The obvious answer, which requires no compromise to either child’s welfare or truth and justice, is to make the biological father pay child support (or, in the particular case in the OP, simply make the father, who lives with the child, support the child).
Another point - if a married man fathered a child to someone other than his wife, and then got divorced, nobody would even think of asking his former wife to help support the child, even if the child lived on the streets.
As a woman, I find the duplicity of the mother in this case to be reprehensible. Why isn’t she required to go out and get a job so that she can provide half the support of the child? Would the father be able to take the mother to small claims court every month to get the money back? I know that if I were in that situation, I would be looking for some revenge, no matter how stupid it was.