This is insane! If this gets upheld, imagine the consequences. A local government, strapped for funds, claims a guy owes a million in taxes. It may take years to beat, but then he’s still held liable for the interest on that million he never owed. Do that a few hundred times, no more cash problems. You can hear lawyer’s revving their engines from here!
Non-father must pay past-due child support, Ark. court says
Even though a paternity test ruled out Anthony L. Parker as the father of a child in a child-support dispute, he still has to pay support owed the mother before he took the test, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The court reversed a decision by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mary Spencer McGowan and sent the case back to her to determine the amount Parker must pay.
The opinion, written by Associate Justice Donald L. Corbin, said state law and prior court cases make it clear that an “acknowledged father” cannot be relieved of past-due child support.
Effectively he was judged guilty by reason of being innocent.
This is a common ruling. If the guy originally accepted the child as his, it is his.
Fortunately, my 1st divorce had a judge with a closer touch on reality. My ex was living in CA and I was in the East Coast when I had to show up for final hearing.
The judge got all bent when he noticed my ex had a daughter — and there was no provision for child support. I stayed calm — and pointed out my ex had been living in CA for 2 years. Her daughter was 6 months old. And I had never visited CA in my life.
No child support.
Saying all that, rulings based on the acceptance of previously incorrect data — even when agreed to — are an example of a legal code that needs to enter the age of reason. Even if it’s a century or so late.
The problem with these cases it seems is that they all involve some form of fraud or deceit on the woman’s part. It’s not that most of these men willingly accept children they know to not be theirs.
Courts upholding this behavior is crazy.
Ditto #1; I think in Ohio this is a matter of law. I recall a state rep submitting a law that said “if you’re not the father, you don’t owe child support”, but it was poo-poo’d because it would harm the children who depend on these payments (I kid you not).
He was ordered to pay because he did not contest the paternity when he was first assessed. Remember, this is Civil, not Criminal Court. He ignored the summons and later the Contempt of Court. By not responding, he was found liable and ordered to pay. If he had simply taken a paternity test in 2002 then he wouldn’t be faced with his problem today. He is the author of his own misfortune.
Damn all lawyers
So why did he not respond to the challenge in 2002? Did he have incompentent counsel or did he just choose to ignore
Timeline
– April 2002 – paternity complaint filed. Parker ignores it.
– June 2002 – judgement of paternity made. Parker ignores it.
– March 2003 – contempt motion filed. Parker ignores it.
– Feb 2005 (?) Parker *finally* decides to take action and get tested.
– March 2005 – Parker arrested on the contempt motion.
Things not covered in the story and should have been:
– were they married?
– had Parker previously acknowledged the child to be his?
– had he in fact received the notices in 2002, or did he just decide to ignore them?
To be honest, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Parker. If he’d taken action FOUR YEARS AGO, he wouldn’t be in this situation now.
Courts and states have a long way to go before they reach anything that even resembles fairness. Try this one: CA charging a father in TX, who has full custody of his children, over 20 grand in back child support and interest because the mother went on welfare while living in CA and used the kids on her application. Court documents showing he has custody? No good, they want their money! So they garnish his wages, give the worthless mother a portion, and line their pockets with the interest, while he’s raising the 4 kids.
Pop quiz, hotshots:
You’re in an elevator with Osama bin Laden, Muqtada al-Sadr and a lawyer. You have a pistol, but only two bullets.
Q: What do you do?
A: Shoot the lawyer twice. No point in taking chances.
#11 Then you ask Osama if he has a knife, so you can borrow it. No sense not making SURE you’ve completed the task properly.
It is one thing to charge the man with contempt of court for not responding to the summons. However, to allow the court to claim the man guilty..eh hem…responsible for the child by not showing up is ridiculous. There is incontrovertible evidence that this guy is not the father. Charging him with thumbing his nose at the court is a vastly different than allowing the woman to continue to collect child support. If that is the case, then it behooves all single mothers to randomly cast out paternity suits across the nation. Men that don’t respond would then have to pay child support. After all, why restrict the woman to getting child support from only one man that is not father.
I am the unwitting and unwilling victim of a similar situation that has evolved into a five figure judgment against me, loss of basic International travel documents and an ongoing threat and possibility of my sole source of income for me and my family being garnished.
The part that is so damningly ‘ Catch 22 ‘ for me is that to introduce the documents that could have made the judgment impossible would have required my paying a lawyer a fee almost identical to the amount of the judgment. I did retain an attorney initially with the meager funds that I had available and he did a superb job of handing my head to the government.
Oh, well.
Sometimes life’s a bitch then it has puppies.
@#1… yeah, he acknowledged that the kid is his… and THAT’s why there was a paternity test.
Get real… he obviously does not believe that he is the father. Or else someone else believes that THEY are the father. Either way, he shouldn’t have to pay.
The real trouble with this is that I will bet that, even though he has to pay the back child support, he will get no parental rights to the child.
And people wonder why I never got married…
So, if the guy is a stand-up guy and wants to support the fact that he *thinks* he is the father ( by being told by the mother or other ) . A stand-up guy will support the fact that it may be possible. If the test concluded that he is not the father, he gets blamed for supporting his *new family* with child payments….
While a jerk would tell her to f*** off, and take the test at the beginning to prove her wrong and have nothing to do with the baby, is all right in the eyes of the court, right ?
So you have to be a jerk in life…
wow!
You really can’t beat Ohio Law. if a chick says you’re the father no matter how much she schemed and lied YOU are the Father. about 3 years ago we had a case where a Woman had her Kid Killed. once she got the insurance money and realized she’d have to share it with her Husband she went to court and told them the kid wasn’t his.
In Michigan if the child is born while you are married it is considered yours no matter what. You could have all the blood/dna tests in the world at the time of birth say otherwise and the father…. err sucker is screwed.
Regarding #3:
For a blog with “Uncensored” in the title there seems to be an awful lot of censorship here.
I have to agree with Fusion (#6) on this one — he only has himself to blame. There is nothing that will piss off a judge faster than ignoring the court. The Arkansas Supreme Court probably hunted for a reason to stick it to him. They lamely blamed their decision on the ambiguity of the law in only addressing “future” payments; as if the Legislature would give a moment’s thought to the absurd notion that just because you are not the father today, it doesn’t mean you were not the father last week.
#12,
It is one thing to charge the man with contempt of court for not responding to the summons. However, to allow the court to claim the man guilty..eh hem…responsible for the child by not showing up is ridiculous.
This is standard for ALL Civil Court cases. If you fail to respond to the summons, judgment is entered for the other party. The only way to have this overturned is by claiming you did not receive the summons and had no knowledge of the case. There is nothing wrong with this case or the way it was handled. If it was a car accident and he was not at fault, it would have the same outcome too.
The defendant could have done something four years ago. He didn’t. And now he is paying the price for ignoring the summons. He didn’t enter a defense when he had the chance.
Sure there are some cases where the man is shafted and my heart goes out to them. The fact remains that there are ten times that number of women that get shafted by fathers that do not pay legitimate child support. I could relate several cases where that has happened locally.
Here in England, despite the gross injustice in child support law which in most respects is similar to US law, if you are shown not to be the father following a DNA test you do not have to continue paying, and you get a refund of all monies paid through the child support agency. In my case this happened because my ex was trying to prove that I wasn’t the father; usually it is the other way round. Of course, she only did this once she was remarried and could afford to lose the payments. The downside is that the courts will not let me see the son who for 10 years I believed to be mine; I haven’t seen him now for 4 years, and can only imagine the effect on him of suddenly losing the man he loved and believed to be his father.
Many states have laws that automatically assign parenting to the married husband even if evidence shows otherwise, to protect the husband from cuckoldry.
#21
> If it was a car accident and he was not at fault, it
> would have the same outcome too.
Your analogy is flawed. Imagine there is a car accident, you are charged at fault and then you provide evidence that you were Belise when the accident happened so clearly it was not you. Using your logic, that person would still be responsible for damages.
If father filed for taxes and owe child support what happend do he recevied any money for the taxes or the states
Ex became pregnant by another man when we were legally separated in 1991. In September of 1992, paternity was established, and the biological father was ordered to pay support and provide insurance. In November 1992, we reconciled and moved back together.
In December 1996, she took the kids from Northern VA to Knoxville, TN – to be with her parents while I attempted to straighten out some legal issues that prevented me from moving out of state.
In May 2000 – while still in Virginia – I was served with divorce papers. I was in such shock that I allowed my friends to talk me into just signing them – “to put it all behind me”. Even though we never maintained a marital home in TN, all proceedings took place in Knox County, TN.
By the divorce document, i agreed to pay 32% of my net income for the support of two children. Through surprise hearings, and ‘imputed’ income determinations – the amount just continued to rise until I could no longer afford to maintain a residence within 100 miles of my job.
After years of trying to explain to the courts that I am not the child’s father and that there is a court order in VA for the actual father pay support – she has hired supportkids – they are garnishing 65% of my wages! I cannot afford to drive to work anymore!!!
Now, my son has been emancipated for almost two years, and they are still charging me at the same rate – claiming the number of children has no impact on the amount I have to pay. So not only am I paying support for a child who is supposed to be receiving support from another man – I am still paying support for my 20 year old son who is living in is own house!!!
Supportkids repeatedly sends me incorrect information regarding my arrearages -when i request an ageing or some kind of paperwork showing how one week arrearages are one amount, the next week it’s three to four times that, and then a month later – it’s less than a third of the originally stated amount – I get promises of paperwork that I have yet to receive. When I call them, they repeatedly tell me that part of my account information is locked (such as what was discussed in the previous calls, or what is being done about the claims for support enforcement of the original Virginia order), and the person on the phone can never find someone who can give me details about my case….yet they continue to send me weekly letters demanding a different amount of money each time! I finally talked to one lady at support kids who said that if my ex called them and told them of the pre-existing paternity order, that they would recompute the arrearages and payments based on the one child (and not pursue a perjury charge against the mother)….only problem is – she refuses to do it!!!
I now work from home as remote IT support for a large company, and it is getting to the point where I cannot afford to cover the expenses required just to perform my job duties (gas, car insurance, internet, phone….). My phone has already been turned off, and my electric is due to be turned off on Tuesday….I am in danger of losing this job due to this!!!!
Yeah, yeah yeah…hire a lawyer, I’ve heard it a thousand times….Hindsight is 20/20 – I know what mistakes I made…..it’s just hard to hire a lawyer when you have no income left!!!
Now, I finally have had a loan offer to get the necessary legal advice – and I don’t even know where to start. Now I’m not sitting here saying that because it’s getting oppressive that i want to just turn my back on this child – I’m just wondering why the biological father is not being ordered to pay, and why I’m still being charged for a child who is emancipated. Also, can anyone offer any experience on how to deal with SupportKids?
Thanks.
I truly love my young son, and the mother swears he is mine and I read the horror stories here and now I know why my father did not want me and why my father tricked him pricking a whole in diaphragm so she could get pregnant.
It seems to completely ethically and legally clear a man should not be responsible to support a child who is the result of his wife sleeping with another man during their marriage. Actually, on religious grounds alone, he would be freed of this. It seems to me, the government wishes to stick it to men in general irregardless of reality, and getting out of paying for support to mothers who truly betrayed the sacred bond of marriage (if they were even married) is a sign of the collapse of our society. It is one in which children have become a focus, while adults are second class citizens. It is more important for a child to receive medical care, food, money, even if he is sick, old, or be hit with child support payments that totally ruin his life. It is the most incredible form of gotcha that society can do to a man. There are very few fathers of X town groups, or fathers forums, or sentiment in courts for abused fathers, fathers who are beaten, must endure women with insane temperaments, while if the role was reversed, the guy would be the monster. My wife and I are splitting up (her choice) and quite honestly I have no idea, except that she went through some kind of change of life and we simply cannot live together without fighting. And the fighting is over nothing. Just snipes over mispronouncing a word, using the wrong word, forgetting to pull up my zipper fast enough when coming out of the bathroom, and and things – except for the zipper, she does herself as often. I look at my son and it grieves my soul how much I love him and even love his mother who suddenly decided she did not love me anymore. No drinking, no other women, just because I didn’t make enough money or that I was getting too old. There is no justice system. Only a legal system. It was never intended to be fair. And it isn’t. Be careful who you sleep with, and even much more careful who you marry if ever. It has been said it is better to marry than to burn – well. perhaps not.
ComputerGuy
My ex-business partner was giving my ex-wife a lot of attention before the business failed, and I had a paternity test done to make sure that my daughter was mine.
My ex-wife called me paranoid, and then she had the …gall to introduce me to her new boyfriend after throwing her affair in front of my kids several years later…