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Condoning Slavery Under Color Of Law — The Best Interest Of A Child — Part IX

March 4, 2007

Best interest of a child

The parentage of a child is its most basic interest but the "best interest of a child" is a much abused concept in today's courts. However, the concept cannot be ignored.

With a few exceptions, such as current law that allows a child to be abandoned at any fire station, and with lesbian mothers, the maternity of a child even today is usually easily established although many cases where maternity is faked are known.

While paternity of a child is of little moment in a matriarchy, it is fundamental to patriarchal societies such as ours. The problem is, and has always been throughout civilized history, that of establishing paternity. Having no better method, since ancient times paternity of a child has been assigned to the husband of the mother at the time the child was born, and adultery by a woman was a capital offense. And it is also an ancient principle that is it in the best interest of a child to have paternity established and left undisturbed by the courts.

Patriarchal societies have also taken great pains throughout recorded history to ensure that, insofar as possible, children were born within a marriage. Until about 1960 fewer than 5% of births were to unwed mothers in the United States.

Therefore, the establishment of a child's paternity is of fundamental importance to our civilization and in the best interest of the child as well. Traditionally the father has provided food, shelter, protection, and education for his child and, despite feminist rhetoric, the father still does. Any child without a father is at a grave disadvantage in a patriarchal society.

The rise of feminism in the 1960's introduced fundamental changes in our laws and mores. One effect was a dramatic increase in the number of children born outside of a marriage and of uncertain or unknown paternity. Today it is estimated that 38% of all children are born outside of wedlock and in matriarchal inner cities the number is above 70%. The ancient dictum certainly doesn't apply and paternity of these children is uncertain at best. The future of most of these children primarily encompasses the range of society's pathologies. And, as I have previously noted, I can't find evidence that any matriarchal society advanced beyond Stone Age technology. Matriarchies in our inner city ghettos are quickly regressing to that level.

Another deeply flawed program is " no-fault" divorce, pioneered by the Bolsheviks following the Russian Revolution of 1917. California was the first to introduce "no fault" in the United States with the passage of the Family Law Act of 1969. Other states and most English-speaking countries foolishly followed suit. Despite the congenital inability of judges to be able to divide by two, it is of little note if a childless couple divorce. However, it is an unmitigated disaster if they have children.

As one result of "no fault" the current divorce rate is ~50% and, combined with the 38% of children born out of wedlock, only about 15 of every 100 children born today will grow up in an intact family with their biological parents. As a result, since its inception the Equal Justice Foundation has been pointing out that under current laws a man has to be functionally insane to marry and a drooling idiot to sire a child.

Few would argue that our society can long survive with such demented policies.

Restoring debtors prisons and slavery

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The horrific increase in illegitimacy and fathers driven from their children by insane divorce and domestic violence laws has placed an immense burden on social services. Rather than attempt to fix the underlying problems, legislatures everywhere have created an immense army of child support enforcement bureaucrats.

The principle hasn't changed but the technology for establishing paternity certainly has. It is worth noting that ~30% of the nearly 400,000 DNA paternity tests now done every year show conclusively that the man tested cannot be the father of the child in question. Also, at present at least 30% of paternity judgements are court-ordered by default with no hearing and no evidence. In California it has been shown that 68% of paternity judgements are entered by default, and in Los Angeles County the rate is 80%.

Whether the father had due process in court or not, whether blatant errors were made and all the parties wealth wasted on inept and incompetent attorneys and "experts," and even when the DNA paternity tests show the man is not the father, our government punishes men, including throwing them in jail, for getting behind in child support. In our county jail 20-30% of the men are there for family-related offenses. The largest category of criminal court cases in Colorado is domestic violence (~15,000 per year). In civil cases the major issue is money, although 14,000 abuse protection orders a year in a population of 4 million is not a trivial issue. For example, the number of marriages each year now roughly equals the number of domestic abuse and violence cases in Colorado.

While false allegations of domestic violence are a great way to destroy a man who has made a woman mad, and a protection order will give her all his property with little problem, such actions all too frequently kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs. And once the eggs are spent the future is often pretty dim for one of the wicked stepsisters, who is even less likely to capture the prince or a millionaire on the second (third, fourth, fifth...) time around.

Paternity fraud: The better way

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A wiser course for a gold digger seeking longer-term income is to file a paternity suit for "child support." Actually having a child isn't necessary as in many of these cases there never was a child, the child died, or was put up for adoption, taken into foster care, or given to relatives.

Virtually every imaginable scam to get "child support" in what is referred to as paternity fraud has been brought to the attention of the Equal Justice Foundation.

A few examples:

• A Colorado man, sterile from birth, had a default paternity order entered against him by an Orange County, California, court. Media coverage of his case eventually provided sufficient embarrassment to the judge that the order was rescinded.

• A Riverside County, California, court entered a default paternity order against a man in South Carolina for the child of a woman he had no knowledge of, carnal or otherwise. The first notice he had of the order was when his wages were garnished and it proved impossible for him to defend himself in a court a continent away. When last heard from he had become suicidal.

• In Michigan the courts ordered Doug Richardson to pay child support to the biological father of his adulterous wife's child.

• In 1996, a woman in Los Angeles County, California, named "Manuel Nava" as the father of her twin boys in an application for public assistance. Somehow child support enforcement decided Manuel Navarro was the father and a process service delivered a summons via "substitute service" with someone identified as Navarro's sister. When he didn't respond within 30 days, having never received the notice, the court named him father by default and established a $247-a-month child support order. In 2004 a landmark decision by a California Court of Appeals ruled that:

"...Despite the Legislature's clear directive that child support agencies not pursue mistaken child support actions, the County persists in asking that we do so. We will not sully our hands by participating in an unjust, and factually unfounded, result. We say no to the County, and we reverse."

In numerous instances the alleged "father" has never seen or known either the mother or the child, has no idea where the "child" and its mother currently are, or the child has been taken into foster care despite the pleas of the "father" to take the child.

These are but a few of the horrors imposed on the 1.4-1.6 million men currently enslaved to support children not their own. And any man who is claimed to be the father of a child is presumed guilty until, and unless they can prove themselves innocent. And there is almost never a penalty or punishment for women who practice paternity fraud, making it a nearly perfect crime.

We should hardly be shocked then that the Colorado legislature, in the guise of state senators Steve Johnson (R) and Shawn Mitchell (R), in effect responded to the Navarro case by introducing legislation, now law, that makes it impossible for a man to use DNA evidence to counter a child support order once a divorce is final or a paternity judgement has been entered against him by default or otherwise, enslaving men to support children that are demonstrably not theirs and further encouraging paternity fraud.

Colorado state senator Mitchell is apparently trying to undo some of the damage he and his redfem (aka RINO) colleagues have done and has introduced SB07-056 concerning modification of child-related orders based on DNA evidence. Basically SB07-056 revokes substantial provisions of SB05-181 (Sen. Johnson and Rep. Jahn) and HB06-1267 (Sen. Mitchell and Rep. Riesberg). However, Senator Mitchell's current bill has major problems and fails to address the principles and issues of paternity determinations.

Mitchell's current folly simply compounds the problems by ignoring the principle that established paternity should not be disturbed by the courts, leaves the question of paternity open indefinitely, and ignores the best interest of the child.

Clearly this bill is written by an attorney to foster the interests of attorneys:

• It makes more work for the courts and lawyers,

• Does not provide penalties for paternity fraud or civil relief for the victim of such fraud,

• Requires the putative "father" to track down the mother and "child" and obtain DNA testing at his own expense,

• If he can even find her she is sure to get a restraining order to prevent him getting the DNA sample, assuming she doesn't already have one,

• In the unlikely event that DNA testing is possible with the requisite chain of evidence he would have to hire an attorney to file a motion for relief,

• All the while the man is almost certainly paying outrageous "child support" on "imputed" income that bears little resemblance to his actual earnings,

• Under the federal Bradley Amendment the man is still obligated to pay any arrearages that accrue while he is trying to prove his innocence.

Only someone in our "legal system" with the limited intelligence of Colorado state senator Shawn Mitchell (R-Adams, Broomfield, Weld counties) could believe the approach of his bill SB07-056 had any chance of producing justice.

Redfems, following their Bolshevik predecessors, are generally doing their best to destroy the patriarchy and families, but are deathly afraid of losing child support for their immorality. One hardly has to watch the Maury Povich show to realize there are often multiple candidates for "father of the year" with these slatterns but they could care less what man pays the money. Actual paternity is of no interest to them.

So any time "reform" of child support laws is proposed these redfems, and their bureaucrat cohorts in CSE, react hysterically and vomit propaganda and disinformation. In the case of Mitchell's current folly, one emotionally-based canard they've put forth is the claim that this bill would cut off many children from the only father they have ever known. For example, In a recent Rocky Mountain News column, editor Vincent Carroll labels any man who dared use what little relief SB07-056 might provide "the picky type whose parental love depends on a genetic link" and says they seek to throw their nonbiological children "overboard with a minimum of fuss." ACFC's Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks are usually better informed but have bought into the sob sisters propaganda, stating: "Carroll does have a point — SB 56 allows the duped dad to sever financial ties between the children and the only father they have ever known."

I certainly see no problem with men remaining voluntarily involved with children that they have not sired. What I do object to is enslaving a man to pay for the infidelity of his wife or girlfriend. Many men are adored stepfathers or are raising their girlfriend's children, which is the basis of McCormick's and Sacks' article and they note that "Carroll and others seem to equate child support with fatherhood," in line with redfem dogma while demonizing men and destroying fathers. Instead we should be doing our best to match biological fathers and mothers and keep them with their children whenever possible, a principle on which our society rests.

I would also note that "duped dads" are fairly rare in paternity fraud cases I'm aware of. Note that only one of the cases cited above involves an adulterous wife. While I know of no statistical studies, from cases I've heard of "duped dads" are about as common as those where the "child" never existed or has died. Instead, the great majority of paternity fraud seen by the EJF involves default judgements. Typically in such cases the man has had little or no contact with the child, and ofttimes doesn't even know the mother, let alone her "child."

Far too often today legislatures are basing laws on emotion-laden exceptions to the norm and have forgotten the principle that the basis for government is to provide the greatest good for the greatest number. Let me state the obvious: The norm is for the biological mother and father to take and have equal responsibility for raising their children without undue interference by the State. I realize that violates the precepts of the socialist nanny state so popular with politicians, left and right, at present.

It is obvious that Shawn Mitchell's current bill was hastily cobbled together by drafters who know little or nothing about paternity issues and fraud in order to attempt to cover up the blunders of his and Steve Johnson's previous child support bills. But legislators have an attitude that once they've passed a law the problem is fixed. Obviously, compounding previous errors with SB07-056 will not fix the problems with paternity fraud, nor would it be in the best interests of children to leave the question of their paternity open.

Fixing the problem

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Adequate provisions for paternity testing are commonly spelled out in state's statutes and it would be a simple matter to require the courts to order such testing done before any child support is ordered, either in a divorce or paternity action. Clearly, courts must also be required to establish actual maternity and that the child for whom support is to be considered is corporeal and in the care and custody of the mother.

Legislation should also spell out that support stops if the mother abandons the child, the child dies or is adopted, or if the child is taken into foster care (provision here to return the child to its father as a first priority would also be beneficial).

In doing so it seems basic that we would honor another ancient foundation of English law, that a man be considered innocent until proven guilty. Current statutes, and the proposed SB07-056 do the reverse.

The best interests of the child require that there be two, and only two times the paternity of the child can be called into question:

(a) When the child is born, which is the ideal time for paternity testing, but with 38% of children currently born out of wedlock that isn't always possible; and

(b) If, and only if, the mother requests court-ordered financial support for the child.

In the second case, responsible legislation should mandate that paternity of the alleged father must be first established by the best available means (currently DNA testing) with a clear chain of evidence (some rather clever means have been used to fake DNA paternity tests).

This approach would both honor the basic principle of leaving the determination of a child's paternity undisturbed insofar as possible and minimize the potential for paternity fraud. Ideally, the child's paternity would be determined by DNA testing at birth and never questioned again whenever possible, as that is certainly in the best interest of the child.

As does Mitchell's SB07-056 bill, exceptions should be made when:

• A man voluntarily and willingly accepts responsibility and shared custody of the child knowing that he is not the biological father,

• The child was adopted by the man and custody is to be shared,

• The child was conceived by means of assisted reproduction using another man's sperm with his full knowledge and prior written consent and agreement that custody will be shared.

Also, as noted in the examples above, many times out-of-state courts impose child support orders on men in Colorado by default (no hearing, no testing, nothing except a woman puts his name on a WIC application, or similar perjury, in some other state). This problem is hardly unique to Colorado, and protection against such fraudulent claims seems a fundamental component of liberty and relief should be spelled out in any new legislation.

This proposal does not require much except common sense and the guarantee of a man's right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Passage of legislation incorporating these basic principles would eliminate the current practice of slavery inherent in paternity fraud, reduce the number of men in jail for refusing to pay child support for children that aren't theirs, and restore some faith in the justice system, now at a very low ebb. What appears to be lacking are legislators with common sense and the courage to stand up in defense of families against redfem ideologues.

We cannot continue to enslave innocent men under the guise of "child support" while leaving the paternity of millions of children undetermined and survive as a society.

Charles E. Corry, Ph.D., F.G.S.A.

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Issues The Equal Justice Foundation Deals With

| Prohibition & War On Drugs | Vote Fraud & Election Issues |