Monday, September 16, 2002

A story published today by the Detroit Free Press reports that each week, $63 from John Ruff's paycheck goes toward child support for a daughter he didn't father, being raised by an ex-girlfriend he no longer sees. Ruff presented this proof to an Oakland County judge. He thought it was enough to stop child support payments and to be removed from legal documents.

He was wrong.

"I hate to say it, but the whole part where I went wrong was the part where I tried to stand up and be a man and take responsibility for what I thought was my daughter," said Ruff, 29, who had lived in Ortonville, Michigan. He has since married and moved to Grand Rapids.

Just as DNA has freed inmates imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, it should also free men from financial support for children they did not father, Ruff and others say.

In Michigan and many other states, legislators are considering laws to do just that.

Last year, the state House passed a package of bills that would permit people to get out of paying child support when a child is not biologically theirs. The bills also permit the cancellation of child support arrearages in such cases and penalize mothers who fraudulently say a man fathered their baby.

The bills sat in the state Senate Committee on Families, Mental Health and Human Services since then because of mostly legal concerns, said Amy Zaagman, chief of staff for committee Chairwoman Sen. Beverly Hammerstrom, R-Temperance.

The current legal system is based on 500 years of common law that gave children born within a marriage the right to claim the man in the marriage as their father, said Christi Goodman, program manager for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But as society changed, and it became more common for children to be born outside of marriage, the laws were adjusted. More effort was made by the government to establish paternity and get single men to take responsibility for their children.

DNA testing didn't become accurate until about five to eight years ago, Goodman said. Then, men who suspected a child was not theirs suddenly had a way to prove it.

Now, many of these men are finding out that DNA evidence may not be enough. So they're demanding that laws be changed, Goodman said.

"It is causing a public stir," she said.

In Michigan, one of the groups to oppose the bills is the Family Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan.

Chairwoman Meri Anne Stowe said she can sympathize with men who are married and later discover a child is not biologically theirs. But Stowe said she is even more concerned about the children in these cases, who know only that man as "Dad."

"We don't want to illegitimize a whole class of children, and we don't want to impoverish a whole class of children," Stowe said. "We have to look at the greater good."