Crisis In False Paternity Judgments

by Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks - August 24th, 2006 - Cybercast News Service

Child support enforcement programs are supported by all sides of the political spectrum, from women's advocates on the left to traditionalists on the right. While this popularity is sometimes understandable, it has also allowed glaring and inexcusable abuses to fester and grow. Of these, none is more egregious than when men are forced to pay 18 years of child support for children who are not theirs, and who in many cases they've never even met.

When I ran a paralegal business in California, one of the clients whose paperwork I prepared had a son who he paid child support for dilligently. He kept meticulous records of the payments. Unknown to him, the mother filed for welfare and claimed he was not paying her, even though he was. She gave as his address the place she had lived with him, even though she knew he had moved. The welfare department attempted service at the old location and then through the newspapers. They got a judgment against the man for repayment of child support even though he was in fact paying it. The paper trail thus proved beyond any legal doubt that the person who was at fault was the mother, who lied. Years went by before the child welfare department bothered to look for the father. When they did he was easy to find. They claimed he owed 10 years of back child support.

During this entire 10 year period, the mother was depositing and cashing the father's checks. He had all the cancelled checks proving that he had paid the child suport she claimed he was not paying. She was the person who lied since she was requesting welfare she was not due.

The judge ignored all of his evidence, claimed that he had failed to properly respond to the summons from welfare (which he never saw) and that his only recourse was against the service company, ignoring the fact the mother had lied. He was made to repay welfare for all of the child support he had already paid. It bankrupted him. His wages were garnished. He lost his job.

In the process his new wife and their 2 children were put out on the street after he was put in jail for not making payments to welfare, even though the unemployment was the fault of the court for garnishing his wages.

The mother of his first child, whose lies caused the problem, continued to receive welfare and the welfare department continued to pile up the debts as being owed by the father. She at least was no longer receiving payments from both welfare and the father. The injustice of this case is my single most egregious example of the callous arrogance exhibited by the judicial scum our nation is burdened with.

When I worked in our family court system I saw enough to say that this article is totally correct. The estimate that over 1 million men are being charged for child support where they are not the father, or where they have paid the child support and the mother has illegally obtained welfare anyway, is clearly pretty accurate. About 1 million men have been denied justice. This is just one example of the corrupt nature of our system of extortion and blackmail, called court.

There is no justice in America. The courts are corrupt.