Los Angeles Daily News
California Paternity Justice Act: If the Genes Don't Fit, You Must Acquit
Los Angeles Daily News, by Glenn J. Sacks, Friday, March 15, 2002, The Los Angeles Daily News
When Larry Nicholson went to court after receiving a child support order, he knew something wasn't right.
"I looked at the child," he says. "The child is white. I'm black. Now I'm not an expert in genetics, but I knew something had to be wrong."
It sounds like an easy problem which any reasonable judge would remedy with one pound of the gavel, right?
"I got a DNA test that excluded me as the father," Nicholson says.
"The judge refused to consider the DNA evidence--not to mention the obvious
evidence right in front of him--and made a child support order. He said that the time period for challenges to paternity had run out. But nobody
had ever served me--I knew nothing about it until I got a bill saying that
I owed support and that I was $75,000 in arrears. If I had known, I would
have contested it in a second."
Nicholson now pays over 40% of his take home pay in child support and arrearages, and will be paying for the next 13 years. Meanwhile he has a wife and a daughter of his own to support.
Nicholson's ordeal has occurred in part because, under current state law, unwed men named in default judgments have only six months to contest an order assigning paternity. Other men faced with erroneous paternity judgments signed paternity declarations under the mistaken belief that they were the fathers, and had only two years to contest the ensuing judgment.
The Paternity Justice Act of 2002 (AB 2240), recently introduced into the California State Assembly by Assemblyman Rod Wright (D-Los Angeles), is designed to remedy these injustices by extending the period during which judgments of paternity may be challenged through genetic testing. The bill requires courts to vacate paternity judgments which are shown to be erroneous, thus relieving falsely identified fathers of further child support.
Erroneously identified fathers often face a number of obstacles. For one, they are often misled into believing that they are the children's biological fathers. Others, like Nicholson, have not been served or notified, and are not even aware that they have been named the father of a child until their wages are garnished. In both cases, the time period under which they can contest paternity has often run out before the men have become aware of reasons to challenge it. In the case of default judgments, men generally bear the burden of proof and often find it difficult to convince the courts that they were never served or notified.
How many men are victims of mistakes or fraud in regard to paternity? Of
the nearly 300,000 cases evaluated each year in the United States, roughly
30% exclude the tested individual as the biological father. Even blood
typing examinations taken decades ago showed that at a bare minimum 10%
of the fathers who signed their babies' birth certificates were unknowingly
claiming paternity of children who weren't theirs. Carnell Smith, the
founder of US Citizens Against Paternity Fraud, estimates that as many as
20% of all fathers are victims of paternity fraud.
Paternity fraud victims' stories often provoke disbelief. For example, four years ago Air Force Master Sergeant Ray Jackson was divorced by his wife. Soon afterwards, he discovered that the three children born during their marriage had, in fact, been the product of three different extramarital affairs. Jackson's ex-wife has disappeared with the children, and Jackson is still paying half his income to support children who aren't his and whom he'll probably never be allowed to see.
Los Angeles area technical instructor Bert Riddick, along with his wife
and three children, fell from the middle-class to homelessness and welfare
dependency within a few years of being falsely identified by an old
girlfriend as the father of her child. Until going into hiding last year,
Riddick was paying 60% of his net income in child support and arrears to
the well-heeled ex-girlfriend who defrauded him. He says:
"The courts decide that I have to pay the child support because it is 'in
the best interest of the child.' But I wonder which child they're talking
about--the child whom tests have shown is not mine, or the three children
who are mine and who I have to feed and clothe every day. Is taking half
of daddy's money for 18 years in their best interest?"
Ontario's child financial support collection agency has big problems
Ontario's Family Responsibility Office has many problems
Quote from Ontario Government Ombudsman -"an equal opportunity error-prone program,."'
Support recipients not getting their money.
Men who've been meeting their court-ordered obligations have trouble getting the FRO to stop taking payments when it's supposed to. Read More ..
Pilloried, broke, alone
March 25, 2000
Divorced fathers get a bad rap for not supporting their children. The truth is, many can't. And, tragically, some are driven to desperate measures, including suicide.
In his suicide note, Jim, the father of four children, protests that "not all fathers are deadbeats." Jim hanged himself because he couldn't see any alternative. Even now, his children are unaware of the circumstances of their father's death. Meeno Meijer, National Post George Roulier is fighting to regain money wrongfully taken from his wages by the Ontario child-support collection agency. Chris Bolin, National Post Alan Heinz, a Toronto firefighter, has gone bankrupt fighting for the return of his daughter, 3, from Germany. No one will help him, but German authorities are trying to collect child support from him.
Whenever fathers and divorce are discussed, one image dominates: the 'deadbeat dad,' the schmuck who'd rather drive a sports car than support his kids. Because I write about family matters, I'm regularly inundated with phone calls, faxes, letters and e-mail from divorced men. It's not news that divorced individuals have little good to say about their ex-spouses. What I'm interested in is whether the system assists people during this difficult time in their lives, or compounds their misery. From the aircraft engineer in British Columbia, to the postal worker on the prairies, to the fire fighter in Toronto, divorced fathers' stories are of a piece: Though society stereotypes these men relentlessly, most divorced dads pay their child support. Among those who don't, a small percentage wilfully refuse to (the villains you always hear about).
What you haven't been told is that the other men in arrears are too impoverished to pay, have been ordered to pay unreasonable amounts, have been paying for unreasonable lengths of time, or are the victims of bureaucratic foul-ups. Read More ..
Non-dad on hook for support
Edmonton and Calgary Sun
Feb 5, 2005
EDMONTON -- An Edmonton judge has decided a divorced dad has to make child support payments, even though the child isn't his. Justin Sumner had an on-again-off-again relationship with the woman he eventually married, Dawn Sumner.
She already had a child from a previous relationship with a man named Rob Duncan, and as she and Justin broke up and reunited, Dawn was sexually involved with both men.
When she found she was pregnant, she called Justin, who recognized there was a possibility that Duncan was the father, but later concluded he was the dad.
Father Committeed Suicide after calling Family Responsibility Office
Andrew T. Renouf committed suicide on or about October 17, 1995 because he had 100% of his wages taken by the Family Responsibility Office, a child support collection agency of the Government of Ontario, Canada.
He asked for assistance for food and shelter from the welfare office and was refused because he had a job, even though all of his wages were taken by the Family Responsibility Office.
Andy was a loving father that hadn't seen his daughter in 4 years.
A memorial service was held in October, 1998, for Andy in front of the Family Responsibility Office at 1201 Wilson Avenue, West Tower, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This is in the Ministry of Transportation grounds in the Keele St. & Hwy 401 area. All members of the Ontario Legislature were invited by personal letter faxed to their offices. Not one turned up. The Director of the Family Responsibility Office and his entire staff were invited to the brief service. The Director refused and wouldn't let the staff attend the service although it was scheduled for lunch time. There was a peaceful demonstration by followed by a very touching service by The Reverend Alan Stewart. The text of the service will soon be able to be read below.
The service made the TV evening news.
It was Andy's last wish that his story be told to all. YOU CAN READ HIS SUICIDE NOTE
Auditor General of Ontario
Disasterous Report on the Family Reponsibility Office FRO 2010
80% of Telephone calls don't get answered
Payers and recipients do not have direct access to their assigned enforcement services officer
"There is only limited access to enforcement staff because many calls to the Office do not get through or are terminated before they can be answered."
"The Office is reviewing and working on only about 20% to 25% of its total cases in any given year."
"At the end of our audit in April 2010, there were approximately 91,000 bring-forward notes outstanding, each of which is supposed to trigger specific action on a case within one month. The status of almost one-third of the outstanding bring-forward notes was "open," indicating either that the notes had been read but not acted upon, or that they had not been read at all, meaning that the underlying nature and urgency of the issues that led to these notes in the first place was not known. In addition, many of the notes were between one and two years old."
"For ongoing cases, the Office took almost four months from the time the case went into arrears before taking its first enforcement action. For newly registered cases that went straight into arrears, the delay was seven months from the time the court order was issued."
Ontario agency admits to overbilling on child support payments
The Ottawa Citizen
January 14, 2012
TORONTO - Ontario's controversial Family Responsibility Office has been overbilling 1,700 parents, mostly fathers, for as long as 13 years, the province admitted Friday.
The 1,700 parents were overbilled by an average $75 each month, after the agency wrongly applied a cost of living adjustment that was eliminated in 1997.
Those who were overpaid will not be forced to give the money back.
Instead, taxpayers will foot the $5.3 million bill for the agency's mistake.
"This error's been found and it's being corrected," said Liberal cabinet minister John Milloy. "We're going to be reaching out to those individuals (who were overbilled) and talking to them about their situation, formally alerting them."
The Family Responsibility Office, or FRO, is responsible for ensuring court-ordered child support payments are made. Read More .. than 97 per cent of all payers overseen by the office are male.
Milloy said the agency discovered the problem at some point in 2011. No one will be fired for the mistakes, he added.
"I see this as something very serious," he said in an interview. "I'm not trying to minimize it, but … there's been lots of action taken to reform FRO, to update computer systems, to update customer relations and it's on a much firmer footing."
The billing mistake is only the latest controversy to engulf FRO.
"Canada's national newspaper for professional women"
The Family Responsibility Office Under Scrutiny
On June 9, 2005 the McGuinty government announced the passage of Bill 155, legislation that promised to increase enforcement, improve fairness and enhance efficiency at the Family Responsibility Office (FRO).
However, the legislation did not address the problem of accountability and, as things now stand, the FRO is a threat to every Canadian affected by a government regulated support and custody arrangement system. Think of George Orwell's 1984 and you'll have a good picture of how issues are handled at the FRO.
They have legal power to extort money from Canadians, but are not responsible or accountable for their actions.
Last year an FRO staff member decided not to wait for a court date to review the financial status of an out-of-work truck driver and took it upon themselves to suspend his license because he was, understandably, behind on his payments, having lost his job earlier in the year. Although he was looking for work, the FRO cut off the only way he knew of to earn a living. His suicide note explained how he'd lost all hope. Is this what we want FRO to be doing? Read More ..