Virtual Library of Newspaper Articles

Duped 'dad' to fight court ruling

The Age, By Peter Gregory, Chief court reporter, April 16, 2005

A Melbourne man who found he was paying maintenance for another man's children is challenging a court decision that removed a $70,000 damages payout earlier awarded to him.

Liam Neal Magill, 54, has lodged an application for special leave to appeal to the High Court against a ruling made last month in favour of his ex-wife, Meredith Jane Magill, 38.

Mr Magill took legal action in January 2001 after DNA tests proved he had not fathered two of the couple's three children.

A County Court judge awarded him damages for pain and suffering and economic loss, but the Court of Appeal overturned the decision.

Yesterday Mr Magill's solicitor, Vivien Mavropoulos, said the appeal court had given a valuable ruling that the law of deceit was not confined to a commercial context.

She said it had also rejected a view that legal action, such as in the Magill case, would cut across the no-fault approach to family law and open the floodgates to litigation.

The Court of Appeal said Mr Magill was awarded damages on the basis of misrepresentations made on birth forms by his then wife about the paternity of the two children. But it said evidence showed the discovery of Ms Magill's adultery and the paternity of the two children were Read More ..jor causes of her husband's mental illness than the misrepresentation.

The special leave application said the Court of Appeal erred in law by failing to find that the birth form representations induced Mr Magill to financially support the children, and aggravated his illness. It said the County Court proceedings were fought on a broader basis than the birth form representations.

No date has been fixed to hear the application.

Yesterday, Mr Magill's girlfriend, Cheryl King, said Mr Magill wanted Ms Magill to be held accountable for her actions through a civil court.

According to the Court of Appeal judgement, Ms Magill began an affair five months after her first child was born. The judgement said Mr Magill paid support for all three children, but the payments were adjusted and arrears wiped when DNA tests showed he was not the father of the two younger children.

Paternity Fraud
UK National Survey

Paternity fraud survey statistics

Scotland's National Newspaper

96% of women are liars, honest

5,000 women polled

Half the women said that if they became pregnant by another man but wanted to stay with their partner, they would lie about the baby's real father.

Forty-two per cent would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, no matter the wishes of their partner.

Paternity Fraud - TV Show - Canada

CBC News Sunday

Paternity Fraud TV Show
CBC News: Sunday

CBC News Sunday- TV Show - paternity Fraud - Canadian Children's Rights Council - Judith Huddart

An indepth look at paternity fraud, men's and children's rights. 10 minutes.

This segment of CBC News: Sunday was on a paternity fraud case in which the husband was ordered to pay child support for 2 children which weren't his biological children.

Globe and Mail - Paternity Fraud statistics for Canada

Canada's largest
national newspaper

Mommy's little secret

The article contains info about children's identity fraud at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

December 14, 2002.

Includes interview with employees of Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada who admit they deny children's identity information to husbands/male partners of mothers who want to hide the real identity of their child because they had an affair. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of The Child specifically supports a child's human right to have a relationship with both his/her biological parents. In addition, this article is proof that The Hospital for Sick Children ("Sick Kids") supports paternity fraud.

Further "Sick Kids" supports a mother's rights only, which they view, supersedes 3 other people's rights, namely, the rights of the biological father, the rights of the mother's male partner/husband and the child's identity rights.

BBC News logo

One in 25 fathers 'not the daddy'

Up to one in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, UK health researchers estimate.

Increasing use of genetic testing for medical and legal reasons means Read More ..uples are discovering the biological proof of who fathered the child.

The Liverpool John Moores University team reached its estimate based on research findings published between 1950 and 2004.

The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Biological father
Professor Mark Bellis and his team said that the implications of so-called paternal discrepancy were huge and largely ignored, even though the incidence was increasing.

In the US, the number of paternity tests increased from 142,000 in 1991 to 310,490 in 2001.

Paternity Fraud - Spain Supreme Court - Civil Damages

Daily Mail UK

Adulterous woman ordered to pay husband £177,000 in 'moral damages'

The Daily Mail, UK
18th February 2009

An adulterous Spanish woman who conceived three children with her lover has been ordered to pay £177,000 in 'moral damages' to her husband.

The cuckolded man had believed that the three children were his until a DNA test eventually proved they were fathered by another man.

The husband, who along with the other man cannot be named for legal reasons to protect the children's identities, suspected his second wife may have been unfaithful in 2001.

Paternity Fraud & the Criminal Code of Canada

Paternity fraud: Is it or should it be a criminal offence under the Criminal Code of Canada?

You be the judge.

Independent Women's Forum

Who Knows Father Best?

Feminist organizations including the National Organization of Women (NOW) has objected to legislation that requires the courts to vacate paternity judgments against men who arent, in fact, the father.

Think about that. NOW wants some man, any man, to make child support payments. The woman who doesnt even know who the father is, should not be held responsible for her actions, is a sweet, loving, blameless mother who seeks only to care for her child and if naming some schmuck as father who never saw her before in his life helps her provide for the innocent babe, well then, that's fine.

Innocence is no excuse. Pay up.   Read More ..

ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
Broadcast: November 22, 2004

Who's Your Daddy?

Last year, more than 3,000 DNA paternity tests were commissioned by Australian men, and in almost a quarter of those cases, the test revealed that not only had their partners been unfaithful, but the children they thought were theirs had been sired by someone else. Read More ..

Independent Women's Forum

Who Knows Father Best?

Feminist organizations including the National Organization of Women (NOW) has objected to legislation that requires the courts to vacate paternity judgments against men who aren't, in fact, the father.

Think about that. NOW wants some man, any man, to make child support payments. The woman who doesnt even know who the father is, should not be held responsible for her actions, is a sweet, loving, blameless mother who seeks only to care for her child and if naming some schmuck as father who never saw her before in his life helps her provide for the innocent babe, well then, that's fine.

Innocence is no excuse. Pay up.   Read More ..

Paternity Fraud Australia

Fathers May Get Money Back in Paternity Fraud Cases

18 March, 2005
FindLaw, Australia

Proposed new laws will make it easier for fathers to recover child maintenance payments if DNA testing reveals that they are not the child's father.

The Family Law Amendment Bill 2005 allows people who wrongly believed they were the parent of a child to recover any child maintenance paid or property transferred under an order of a court under the Family Law Act 1975 .

"The bill is intended to make it easier for people who find themselves in this position to take recovery action without the need to initiate separate proceedings for an order from a court of civil jurisdiction, such as a State, Local or Magistrates court," Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said.