Reasonable Paternity Fraud Story

	posted by Brad on Saturday October 05, @04:25PM from the Reproductive-Rights dept.
	Mitchell Smith writes in pointing out this story focusing on paternity laws at ABCNews.com. "The paternity debate is heating up in the courts, too. Two men recently attempted and failed to get the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their cases after lower courts ruled they must continue paying support for children who turned out not to be theirs. One, Carnell Smith of Decatur, Ga., is trying to recoup more than $40,000 from his ex-girlfriend after learning three years ago that her 13-year-old daughter is not his."

	The article goes on to make a few good points, including this one. "[Commonlaw Fatherhood] is an ancient practice going back thousands of years for the government or king or chieftain to make a rule about who is the child's parent. And it really was a way of organizing society. Using that argument, men could justify many socially unacceptable practices by relying on centuries-old law, say fathers' rights advocates. "Well, fine, if you want to bring back common law, then I own children and even a woman as chattel. If I catch the woman in an adulterous relationship, I can kill her. Do you want to bring that back?" Jaks said.

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Irresponsible Reporting (Score:3, Informative) by warble (activistwarble@yahoo.com) on Monday October 07, @12:44AM EST (#1) (User #643 Info) Here is a letter that was written to Geraldine Sealy on the biased report: As an advocate for victims of paternity fraud, I have personally spoken to many victims to discuss their circumstances. I also lobby with the legislature in California to advocate on behalf of these victims. NCFM, LA has worked closely with Assemblyman Wright in crafting the Paternity Justice Act in a manner that would be fair to all parties involved. Further, when the opposition negotiated in bad faith, we continued to seek a compromised solution that would server the interest of all parties.   Because of this experience, NCFM, LA is noticing several patterns associated with paternity frauds that are routinely overlooked. One pattern is for the public to fail to recognize the breadth and scope of the crisis in paternity fraud. As of the year 2000 there were 70.4 million children in the United States. Further, experts like Peggy Vaughan and Blaine Powel peg the rate of extramarital affairs by women between 40-50%. Obviously, the numbers of women having multiple partners is a difficult to obtain due to social taboos. However, if we assume that about 20% of mothers have multiple or serial partners and estimate that about 10% of the mothers failed to properly identify the father, then we find that about 7 million children have not had their fathers properly identified in the last 30 years.   Another pattern involved emotional abuse and domestic violence initiated by the mothers. From the perspective of the paternity fraud victims, we find that in almost every case there is emotional abuse of both the child and the father. When ask how severe the pain is on a scale of 1-10 they always peg it at about 10. This is not a short-term pain, but it is one that last and endures for years. A common cause of this abuse occurs when the couple’s relationship goes sour. At that time, it is common for the mother to victimize the child and the man by saying that he is not the father of the child. Many children never recover from the shock of such an event. Yet the mothers are never prosecuted for this form of child abuse.   When people like Paula Roberts try to dissociate the role of biology from the emotional attachment to a father's child, they callously gloss over and ignore the permanent damage that a mother causes when she commits paternity fraud. It is really quite simple. All a mother needs to do is fill out the form correctly. Only the mother knows if there has been more than one sexual partner at the time of conception, yet mothers routinely fail to disclose, under penalty of perjury, the possibility of their being another father when the child is born. As of yet, NCFM knows of no mother that has been prosecuted for the extreme damage and violence that is afflicted upon the child and falsely named father. Nor are they prosecuted for perjury even when the victims request criminal action against the perpetrator of the fraud.   In addition, we find that in many cases, when the mother does know the biological father, after she damages the child’s relationship with the falsely named father, that she collects child support, severs the relationship, and encourages the child to build a relationship with the actual father. We know of many victims where this pattern results from paternity fraud. We rarely find the victim of the fraud and the child carrying on a father-child relationship.   Further, when the man is within the period permitted for challenging paternity, the mother will frequently avoid court hearings to establish who is the father of the child. The financial devastation that results to the man's biological children and wife of a marriage or cohabitation is beyond reproach. NCFM, LA notes that not a single news article has reported on how these irresponsible mothers will avoid paternity challenges.   Another form of paternity fraud is when a state will fail to take the necessary steps to properly identify the biological father of a child. For example, in Los Angeles County there is an excessive default judgment rate of 79%. The motivation of this practice is to obtain 40 million in federal matching funds. The state routinely serves 10's of thousands of notices of hearing using substitute service. Of this, at lease 10% of the notices never make it to the man in question. NCFM, LA routinely receives questions on how to address this issue from men that are all over California. Later, when a victim of a default judgment learns of that his wages are garnished the time limits have expired and there is no recourse. We even have records of the opposition in the California Senate Committee of Judiciary admitting that there is a serious problem with paternity fraud. Yet they routinely fight legislation that will remedy this issue. They continue supporting the practice using "the best interest of the child" argument. When such victims try to dispute paternity, the state continues legally extorting money from the victim and refuses to accept DNA evidence. They continue doing this even when the biological father is made known!   Worse, the opponents of paternity fraud legislation do not want the state to be responsible for falsely identifying the father of a child. They do not want California to refund the money to the victim of the fraud. They want to be able to collect the funds for child support from virtually any man and obtain matching federal funds.   Therefore, NCFM, LA believes that it is shortsighted and biased to fail to report this emotional and financial devastation. It is biased to fail to report how the state refuses to enforce visitation rights of the financially responsible victim of the fraud. We ask that you please give more consideration to the victims of paternity fraud, and report this devastation. We ask that the domestic violence component of this practice be exposed, and that the media accurately report this fact. There is no justifiable excuse for people like Lisa Bonder to allegedly commit paternity fraud against billionaire Kerkorian and be rewarded an income exceeding $600,000 per year without any criminal prosecution. All that does is teach children to be criminals by example. We do not need a culture of criminals. Warble Disclaimer: My statements are intended to be personal opinion, belief, sarcasm, or allegation.

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