Sunday, December 8, 2002

A story published today by the USA Today reports that a Michigan courts have spurned the DNA results Damon Adams offered in his motions to stop paying $23,000 a year in child support. Now, Adams is lobbying the state Legislature for relief and joining other men in a national movement against what they call "paternity fraud."

In almost a dozen states, men have won the right to use conclusive genetic tests to end their financial obligations to children they didn't father. But women's groups and many public officials responsible for enforcing child support are battling the movement, which they say imperils children.

Most states design their family laws to protect what they call "the interests of the child." That means siding with the child's financial and emotional needs and against supposed fathers who want to avoid paying for tricycles and braces.

Many men who feel deceived by a woman are in no mood to accept a legal system that doesn't recognize DNA science in such cases.

"It's like they are saying, 'Let your wife cheat on you, have children by other men, divorce you, and now you have to pay for it all,' " said Air Force Master Sgt. Raymond Jackson, 43. California judges won't consider tests he says prove that the three children of his former 10-year marriage were fathered by other men.

The American Association of Blood Banks said the 300,626 paternity tests it conducted on men in 2000 ruled out nearly 30 percent as the father.

Gradually, legislators are reshaping paternity law. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Virginia permit ex-husbands and out-of-wedlock fathers to end child support through DNA. Maryland has made the same change through court decisions.

Colorado, Illinois and Louisiana grant relief only to ex-husbands, allowing them to offer genetic proof. Texas allows ex-husbands four years from a birth to disprove paternity and gives unwed fathers unlimited time. A sweeping bill that would authorize married and unmarried fathers to offer DNA evidence is working its way through the New Jersey State Assembly.

Pending in Vermont is the toughest bill of all. It would make a mother's knowingly false allegation of fatherhood a felony that could put her behind bars for up to two years and fine her up to $5,000.

Men's rights groups aren't advancing everywhere. California Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a bill in September that was opposed by women's organizations. It would have given men two years after discovering they weren't the father to produce the DNA evidence to prove it. Florida paternity fraud bills died this year. A package of bills passed the Michigan House 102-0 but is stalled in the Senate.

Some analysts say laws need revising but DNA shouldn't be decisive. "Some people want to dump the child and say biology is all that matters, not relationships," said Jack Sampson, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin. Carol Sanger, a family law professor at Columbia University in New York, said the law should be more generous to men who may not even know a child than to dads who have been living with the kids they didn't father.

"The other guy is somewhere over the hill and long gone," said Jenny Skoble, an attorney at the Harriet Buhai Center for Family Law in Los Angeles. "If it comes down to whether the only (available) father is going to be on the hook to pay money or this kid is going to be in the situation of having no father, I'd say we have to put the child first."