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The Boston Globe
30 April 2001, p11
SJC to paternity victim: Keep paying, chump
By Jeff Jacoby
She told him he was the little girl's father, and he believed her. So when
the state asked him to acknowledge his paternity, he went in and signed the
paper they put before him. Though scarcely more than a child himself, he
understood that good men don't walk away from their children, so he paid
the child support asked of him without grumbling - 27 percent of every
paycheck, right off the top. He visited "Cheryl" regularly, played
with
her, bonded with her. He loved his daughter and tried to be a good father.
Oh, he knew what people said. Two of the mother's friends told him that
Cheryl wasn't his. Some people, observing that his daughter didn't resemble
him, hinted that he was being played for a fool. But he figured the people
who talked like that were just trying to bust his chops, or were having a
fight with the mother, or didn't know what they were talking about. Maybe,
down deep, he suspected they might be right but couldn't bring himself to
confront the mother over it. Maybe, as people often do, he simply lived
with an awkward situation until it became unbearable.
Maybe he couldn't bear the thought of losing his little girl.
And so it wasn't until 1999, when Cheryl was 5, that he finally took her
for a DNA test. When it confirmed that he wasn't her father, he asked to be
released from child support. Now that the truth was known, he argued, it
wouldn't be fair to keep making him pay for another man's child.
Last week the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court gave him its answer:
Shut up and keep paying.
"The law places on men the burden to consider carefully the permanent
consequences that flow from an acknowledgment of paternity," the court
held. "He waited too long to challenge his paternity."
And what burden, you might wonder, does the law place on women? A burden to
tell the truth when asked to identify a child's father? A burden not to
trick a young man into forfeiting tens of thousands of dollars that he
doesn't owe? A burden not to deceive the courts?
Nope, none of the above. To judge from the court's opinion, a woman like
Cheryl's mother is under no obligation at all. The justices who decided
this case say nothing - not one word - about her dishonesty or the immense
hardship she has inflicted on an innocent man. There is no hint that they
disapprove of a woman who bears a child out of wedlock, then falsely names
a former boyfriend as the father so she can go on welfare.
She may have been the liar, the court seems to believe, but he is the one
who is guilty - guilty of not seizing the "opportunity to undergo genetic
testing before he acknowledged paternity" and of not having "promptly
challenged the paternity judgment" once he suspected he might not be
Cheryl's real father. Never mind that he was only 18 at the time, a kid
just out of high school. Never mind that he didn't have a lawyer or realize
he needed one. Never mind that he wouldn't have known what the offer of
"genetic marker testing" meant even if he had noticed that phrase in
the
fine print of the legal documents he agreed to sign.
None of that gives the justices pause because they are focused on something
else.
His money.
We may not be able to force this guy to go on pretending he is Cheryl's
father, says the court, "but we can protect her financial security."
He may
no longer feel the same affection for her, but "we can ensure that Cheryl
... is not also deprived of the legal rights and financial benefits of a
parental relationship." In short, it's OK to keep ripping him off because
she needs the money.
He works in a restaurant and makes $21,000 a year, more than half of which
is deducted to pay child support and taxes. He has already shelled out
$25,000 to support a child he didn't father and can expect to hand over
another $50,000 before she turns 18 - and perhaps pay for her college
education after that. He is so financially straitened that he cannot afford
to move out of his parents' house.
But the swindle must go on, says the court, because someone else needs his
money. In the court's view, he is not a wronged man with a compelling plea
for relief. He is an ATM machine.
The court justifies this dreadful ruling by noting that "numerous other
courts" - in Vermont, Florida, and Maryland, for example - have done the
same thing. It's true; they have. The problem has gotten so bad that a
group of men have formed Citizens Against Paternity Fraud to press for
relief in the state legislatures.
But how the mighty are fallen. There was a time when the Massachusetts
Supreme Judicial Court was renowned for its legal brilliance, when it was
the court other courts relied on in abandoning unworthy precedents. Today
it is a follower, not a leader, hiding behind unjust decisions elsewhere to
rationalize injustice of its own.
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Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.
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