Per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, both a special assistant state attorney general and a judge knew when sentencing Frank Hatley that he was not the biological father of the child born to an unmarried woman with whom he’d had a relationship. With the assistance of DNA results and a legal services lawyer Hatley had managed to get out from under future payments, but his arrearage on existing support (premised on his obligation to reimburse the state for its public assistance payouts on behalf of his supposed son) still left him in “deadbeat dad” status. “He’s dealing with a valid court order”, said one lawyer. So, as the paper notes, he’s “languished in a South Georgia debtor’s prison jail for more than a year”. More: Above the Law, Greenfield, CNN. Update Jul. 16: Hatley is freed.
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Do men have any rights any more in this country? And we’re about to get a Wise Latina who will make things even worse for us.
Of course, he shouldn’t ever have paid a penny in the first place.
[…] Lawyered: Homeless Man Jailed for Non-Support of Non-Biological Child Share and […]
It looks like a big reason that he went to jail was that at that time, he apparently did not have a lawyer. Kudos to Walter for including an against-the-grain example of the dangers of being underlawyered.
It’s about the court’s determination to punish Frank Hatley, a “Deadbeat Dad” who not only isn’t a deadbeat, but also isn’t a dad. That’s American justice at its finest. Another fine job by the American just-us system: DA Office, Dept. of Justice, Dept of Human Resources and Child Services, Office of Child Support and Services. We were royally screwed by the system
For anyone who has been involved with a Family Court in a divorce or custody hearing, this is not hard to believe. It’s a total farce. And the lawyers make tons of money from it.
When it comes to child support or even domestic violence males are moved through the legal system just like cattle through a slaughter house.
A few years ago a friend of mine had his girlfriend and her son (not his) living with him in his house. They were having a verbal arguement, but it was loud enough that somebody called the Police. When the Police got there the first thing that they did was to ask the girlfriend if she felt physically threatened by him? Of course she said “Yes”. He was then told, by the Police, that he would have to leave for the night and did he have any firearms in the house? When he told the Police that it was his house, he was told that it didn’t matter. The policy was that the man had to leave, especially if there was a child involved. To make a long story short, he spent the night at my place and the cops took his guns. When he went back to his house the next day, the door was wide open and almost everything in the house of any value was gone. To make things worse, it took six weeks and a lawyer for him to get his guns back.
The oppressive “FemiNazi” family court system strikes again.