This is tooo wrong for sooo many reasons.
Panel agrees on paternity measure
By Michael Gardner
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
SACRAMENTO — Nick Napoli pays $180 a month in child support for a boy who is not his son.
The biological father “gets all of the love. I get the bill,” said Napoli of Cloverdale. Napoli and hundreds of others are trapped in an unyielding legal system that forces them to pay child support even when the biological father steps forward, or is identified later through DNA testing.
Lawmakers, trapped in a clash between men\'s rights and the desire to protect children, are moving to strike a balance in such contested paternity cases. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday approved a legislative compromise that would allow men to challenge child-support orders in limited circumstances. In all cases, they must be armed with DNA tests that prove they did not father the child.
Assemblyman Rod Wright, a Los Angeles Democrat carrying the measure, called it a “Miranda rights” for unsuspecting men. “Why should someone be forced to pay for a child who\'s not theirs?” Wright said.
But the issue is not that clear-cut, according to child-rights advocate Lupe Alonzo, who has participated in negotiations on the bill for the Center for Public Interest Law of San Diego. “You\'ve got to think of the child\'s interests,” Alonzo said.
Once broadly written to offer a range of new rights for men to challenge paternity, the measure has been narrowed to apply only in those cases of court-ordered “default judgments.” Those cases occur when the alleged father does not appear in court. Some men do not receive notices to appear because state law permits summonses to be delivered to a job site where they may no longer work or to their last-known home address.
Under existing law, default judgments stand — even when DNA tests prove someone else is the father. Under the compromise, AB 2240 would allow men to challenge default orders if DNA evidence proves they are not the father. Regardless, men would still have to pay child support if the child had lived in the home or a familial bond was established. The bill would not provide all men with another day in court. For example, in divorce cases, husbands would still be responsible for child support even if it\'s later proved that the child was conceived in an extramarital affair.
“Biology does not make a father. . . . In the child\'s eyes, you are the father,” Alonzo said.
A compromise
Wright was clearly unhappy with being forced to cut a deal, particularly after the broader version had sailed off the Assembly floor on a 57-3 vote. But, he said, it was either accept the offer or lose the bill. Wright dismissed the significance of bonds that may develop between the nonbiological parents and children, Wright said. “They just write checks,” Wright said of most men who are forced to pay.
Valerie Ackerman, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law, remains opposed to the bill.
“The front end of paternity establishment has to be fixed,” she said. At a minimum, the system of notifying alleged fathers of their rights and responsibilities needs to be improved, she said. However, Ackerman said, there are some safeguards in existing law. Men have six months from the time they learn they have been named as the fathers to mount a challenge, she said.
Nonbiological dad
Despite its limited reach, Bert Riddick embraces the amended legislation. The Carson resident pays $1,400 a month to support a child he has never met and “DNA has proven he is not mine.”
“My family is ruined by something I had nothing to do with,” Riddick said.
Difference of opinion
Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a former family law attorney who voted against the bill, said it\'s vital to a child\'s interest to have a father figure in his or her life. “What makes a father? This bill says the donation of genetic material makes a father. I don\'t agree,” said Kuehl, D-Santa Monica. But a dozen or so men who have regularly lobbied for the bill this year say in many cases they never had a chance to form a relationship. More importantly, as Riddick asked, “What about my own children? What about their interests?”
Publish Date:08/14/02
http://www.dailybreeze.com/content/bln/nmppaternty14.html
