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Paternity Fraud — A Small Victory And Another Nail In The Coffin Of Marriage

May 17, 2008

Paternity fraud

A May 2, 2008, article in the New York Post reported that 34% of the mothers polled had an extramarital affair after the birth of their children. There is no reason to believe that the percentage is less than one-third of married women who have an affair before their first child is born.

Census figures show that presently 38% of children are born out of wedlock and in California it is reported that two-thirds of children are born to unmarried mothers. And it bears repeating that virtually every pathology of our society correlates best with children of single mothers.

Only about 12 out of 100 children are born today to a couple who are legally married and remain so until their children reach majority. Thus the potential for paternity fraud is huge.

DNA genetic tests for paternity consistently show that 30% of the men tested are not the father of the child in question and there are approximately 400,000 laboratory paternity tests reported a year, although home testing kits are now widely available and the total number of paternity tests a year is unknown. A reasonable estimate is that there are 1.5 million men in the United States with children under age 18 that they are not the father of but are probably paying child support for, i.e., victims of paternity fraud.

There is no penalty for paternity fraud and many of the women who practice it have several possible candidates for "dad" for their child(ren). So it is only reasonable she will pick the man with the deepest pockets to saddle with paternity and "child support."

And lest it be thought paternity fraud is strictly a problem for men, most of the time we hear about a particular case from a woman whose life has been damaged or destroyed by this evil.

One might reasonably expect that courts and legislatures would be doing everything possible to stem this flood and prevent fraud that often makes adultery, once a capital crime, now a paying proposition for hundreds of thousands of women. One would be wrong to make that assumption.

Destroying the patriarchy

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Such data as above are exciting to those whose goal is to destroy the patriarchy and return to the law of the jungle, otherwise known as matriarchy. And, if you favor a matriarchy, you are invited to move to any inner city ghetto in a large city, which are de facto matriarchies.

Patriarchy is an artificial societal construct that requires that the paternity of a child be unambiguously established. History clearly shows that patriarchal societies are an essential component of civilization. Since at least Roman times in Western society the father of a child has been the man the woman was married to when the child was born. That worked well when less than 5% of children were born out of wedlock and there was no better method of determining paternity. However, times have changed.

Even though it is a feminist goal to destroy patriarchy, they still want men to support women despite their adultery and infidelity. The result has been the invention of "child support" in an amount based on "the best interest of the child," which need not bear any relationship whatsoever to actual paternity or income of the man named as "father." As anyone but a politician, judge, or bureaucrat quickly realizes, such a system of enslavement isn't likely to work. The same group, however, are quite unlikely to bow to commonsense. Thus, they have put in place a gigantic, draconian "child support enforcement" (CSE) system that has taken us from welfare to a police state, as Dr. Baskerville has ably described.

Of course when Joe Sixpack finds out Suzy's baby isn't his, and that she has been spreading the good times around, things are likely to get a little nasty. Who would have guessed? And, if Joe and Suzy are married, that will soon end. So enter the "domestic violence" industry that allows Suzy to call 911, or get a protection order and toss Joe out of his own home, then move her new Boy Toy in, all the while collecting "child support" from Joe as a reward for her adultery.

All this enforced at public expense, of course. And if Joe doesn't want to pay Suzy "child support" for little Johnny ? then he will lose all his licenses, his job, and, ultimately, go to jail. Sure sounds like slavery to me!

Roughly 12% of men who refuse to pay child support do so because they are not the father. A good place to meet these rebellious slaves is in your local jail where they are imprisoned under the category of "Deadbeat Dads."

Before the Civil War slaves were often required to work to support children their wives bore that were sired by overseers and their masters. What is the difference today between that and a woman who has an affair, divorces her husband, and the court requires the cuckolded husband to support the child of her adultery?

Condoning slavery under color of law

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The Equal Justice Foundation has been fighting these insane policies for years and our formal efforts began in March 2004 in support of HB04-1083 sponsored by Rep. Bill Sinclair (R-El Paso) and Sen. Ed Jones (R-El Paso). That bill was passed by the Colorado House by one vote but failed in the Senate judiciary committee. We have documented the problems since then in a series of twelve newsletters, Condoning Slavery Under Color Of Law, and a chapter describing the Paternity Fraud Epidemic.

Instead of recognizing the problems, in 2005 the then Republican-dominated Colorado legislature began a series of bills that made the problem worse. Today, as evidenced by the Bush Administration, any jackass can call themselves an elephant and the party of Lincoln has become, by and large, pro-slavery. The term RINO (Republican In Name Only) has been widely used but these rogue pachyderms seem to have taken over the Grand Old Party (GOP).

The best evidence for that is the passage in 2005 of SB05-181 by Colorado Senator Steve Johnson (R-Larimer) that made it impossible for a man to use DNA evidence to prove nonpaternity of his wife's child after the divorce. For that the North Carolina group Drop the GOP named Steve Johnson the Single Biggest Idiot on Earth for 2005. In 2008 it is reported Johnson is leaving the Colorado Senate to run for county commissioner in Larimer County. Pity the citizens there!

But the Colorado legislature is not renowned for learning from its mistakes. So in 2006 HB06-1267 was introduced at the behest of the Dept. of Human Services (DHS)/Child Support Enforcement (CSE) and sponsored by Rep. Jim Riesberg (D-Weld) in the House and by Senator Shawn Mitchell (R-Adams, Broomfield, & Weld) in the Senate in an attempt to correct some of the obvious blunders with Johnson's SB05-181. That bill quickly passed the House and Senator Mitchell couldn't be bothered to read a six-page letter detailing page-by-page and line-by-line some of the problems with this bill. Despite the fact that at least one other citizen and EJF member repeatedly emailed him, Mitchell, had not felt it was worth his time and effort to actually read our comments and suggestions before it was heard by the Colorado Senate judiciary committee. Thus, HB06-1267 passed into law, further encouraging paternity fraud and making it more difficult for men to prove their innocence. Senator Mitchell did not take kindly to criticism. But several attorneys pointed out that HB06-1267 is a Bill of Attainder and, as such, is an odious law by any measure.

Fortunately, Shawn Mitchell does learn from his mistakes and the next year he introduced a bill, SB07-056, to try and remedy some of the mistakes in 2006-2007. But public disgust with Republicans in general, and RINOs in particular, had resulted in both the Colorado House and Senate being dominated by Democrats after the 2006 elections, and he was unable to get that bill passed.

There are good Republicans, and Senator Mitchell came back in 2008 with another bill, SB08-183 (as introduced), to try and remedy some of the problems with paternity fraud. With only a minor amendment that added a filing fee to make it revenue neutral, that bill passed the Colorado Senate.

The clear intent of SB08-183 was that when DNA testing found that a man was not the father of a child for whom he was required to pay child support, that the court "shall modify or set aside" such payments, thereby ending his enslavement, unless the man had willingly and knowingly adopted the child, acknowledged paternity knowing he wasn't the biological father, or the child was conceived by means of assisted reproduction. Simple and just you might think. But a House pachyderm hadn't yet stuck his trunk into the picture.

Another nail in the coffin of marriage

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After passage by the Colorado Senate HB08-183 was referred to the House judiciary committee and sponsored by Rep. Nancy Todd (D-Arapahoe & Denver), another legislator who seems to have learned from her mistakes, e.g., SB05-181. With her able help and guidance, SB08-183 was passed by the House judiciary committee on April 29, 2008.

Unfortunately, the bill was amended to put a time limit of just two years, down from five, to file for a modification of the child support order, which is quite unrealistic as many men don't find out about the child support order for several years after it is entered, or don't begin to question the paternity of a child until many years after the divorce. Also, any man whose child support order was entered before August 15, 2008, must provide DNA evidence showing he is not the father before August 15, 2010.

Note that SB08-183 does not give a man any means of obtaining the requisite DNA evidence, a slight handicap if he doesn't even know who the woman is, where she is currently living, has a restraining order against him preventing him from contacting the child(ren), or help proving the child(ren) are presently corporeal or in her custody, etc. But he can file a motion for relief if, under the strict chain-of-evidence requirements for DNA testing in Colorado statutes § 13-25-126, he can establish he is excluded as the biological parent of the child(ren). One might cynically note that the man is still presumed guilty and that the legal system provides every possible protection for the perpetrator of the fraud but why complain, SB08-183 is a step forward and a small victory.

On a positive note the amendments did allow a judge to vacate child support arrearages although restitution for the fraud is, realistically, not possible. And, except if the arrearages were the result of welfare payments made by Colorado, it isn't clear that a court can forgive these arrearages under the Bradley Amendment.

For years the Equal Justice Foundation has been pointing out that under current law a man has to be functionally insane to marry and a drooling idiot to sire a child. Thanks to Representative Bob Gardner (R-El Paso & Fremont), an attorney whose district lies along the western flank of Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, and whose competence is no greater than 99 out of 100 others of his ilk, SB08-183 as passed by the House reinforces that statement.

If a man is married to the mother he is, presumptively and by ancient tradition, the father of any child born to his wife during the course of the marriage. If the couple divorce, child support is determined under the Uniform Dissolution of Marriage Act § 14-10-101 et seq. What Gardner, a donkey in an elephant suit, did was introduce an amendment during floor debate in the Colorado House that a husband could only be freed from his slavery to pay for his wife's proven adultery if, and only if the judge determines "...it is just and proper under the circumstances and in the best interest of the child." I need not elaborate on the judicial bias against men in family courts today.

Thus what Bob Gardner has done is to put another nail in the coffin of marriage, promote adultery, and make it profitable by supporting paternity fraud. It is also obvious that military men are particularly vulnerable to paternity fraud, particularly when they are repeatedly deployed. One of the largest concentrations of military families in the United States lives in or alongside Mr. Gardner's House district and his contribution to our national defense is obviously to help demolish it.

May you rest in hell, Mr. Gardner, for you have done your part to help destroy civilization.

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 |