Monday, December 30, 2002

A story published today by the Star Tribune reports that for more than five years, the St. Paul man assumed the child born to his girlfriend in the midst of their relationship was his own. He treated the boy as his son and even agreed then to a court order that he was the father.

But last year he got a genetic test that said he wasn't. He now feels he shouldn't be legally deemed dad and shouldn't be required to pay child support, his attorney said.

In many states, including Minnesota, such a revelation hasn't mattered once a man has developed a relationship with the child and a court has decided he's the legal father. But a state Court of Appeals decision in this case may be a sign of change, some attorneys said.

The court sent the case back to Ramsey County District Court to be reconsidered.

The court said the best interests of the child shouldn't be a factor in this instance.

"I see this decision as the beginning of what's going to have to be a very big-picture review of how the technology of DNA is going to affect how we determine who dad is," Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner said. "This is a huge issue that states across the country are grappling with."

The St. Paul man, Lionel R. Suggs, claimed he was defrauded by the boy's mother, who has said he was the only possible father, according to court documents.

Like many unwed men who believe they are the father, Suggs waived a DNA test during a court proceeding to establish paternity.

His current attorney, John Westrick, said he advises clients to take the DNA test.

State laws give legal dads deadlines to question paternity. Westrick said his client made a challenge in time, though a lower court ruled it wasn't in the child's best interest to relieve him of legal fatherhood.

Gaertner and Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Mark Ponsolle are considering whether they should allow men to waive the tests in paternity proceedings. Doing the test would cost about $200 each for about 1,500 cases in the county each year. Most of the cost would be reimbursed by the federal government.

"We're re-evaluating what we want to do. . . . Should we not take the mother's and father's word for it?" Ponsolle asked.

Husbands are presumed to be the father of their wife's child under the law, and Ponsolle said they aren't suggesting testing in those cases.

A 1999 study by the American Association of Blood Banks showed that, out of more than 280,000 tests for paternity at accredited labs in the United States -- most of them done in child support cases -- 28 percent excluded the man as the father.

Balancing the interests of the child and the legally recognized father is a sticky issue, many attorneys acknowledge.

"One of the issues is stability for the child," Gaertner said. "In [the Suggs case], this is the only father the child has known . . . yet the DNA has definitively determined that he is not the biological father."

Gail Chang Bohr, an attorney and executive director of the Children's Law Center of Minnesota, said she believes that in the Suggs case, the Court of Appeals was "not going far enough to consider the interests of the child."

Bob Carrillo, director of communications for the group R-Kids of Minnesota, which stands for Remember Kids in Divorce Settlements, said he thinks the "best interest of the child" is used too often as a "catch-all for excuses."

"The best interest of the child ought to be the truth," Carrillo said. "Certainly if [men who thought they were dad] want to maintain a relationship with that child, that's fine . . . but why make them responsible economically when there's another father out there?"