Once the Deadbeat Dad machinery of the state is clanking along, actual innocence isn’t enough to excuse you, Carnell Alexander of Detroit says he has discovered to his sorrow. [WXYZ] Also, from last year, another Detroit case: “Father says he’s still paying child support for 3-year-old son who died 25 years ago”
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I really love the bureaucrats in the second story: they keep doing “audits” and the number is slowly creeping down, but it is still a substantial amount of money, along with penalties and other fees thrown in. I envision bureaucrats just sitting around a table and guessing what sort of number this man will tolerate and then go away, almost like a bid:
“Do you think he’ll go away if we say $20K? $15K? $10K?”
At no time do any of these paper pushers believe that they took TOO MUCH money from this guy and they owe him something back. Imagining that their department needs to write this gentlemen a check and issue an apology, just does not enter into their mindset.
The Friends of the Court — you know, the guys being paid — insist on calling the “error” regretful. The Friends of the Court aren’t regretful, just the errors, which have nothing to do with them.
Also, they agree that the guy doesn’t seem to owe any money, just the surcharges.
Bob
marco,
I’ll take any and all bets that these “paper pushers” are union. Their asses are covered for all of their mistakes and all of these “audits” are being used to show how overworked they are, thus the need for more union “paper pushers”.
Appalling Child Support Injustice: Man On The Hook For $30K In Child Support For Kid Everyone Agrees Isn’t His
This man — Carnell Alexander — ordered to pay tend of thousands of dollars in back child support, did not father the child in question…
I have an even worse one. Back in the 1990s in West Texas a man found out, after one of his boys was being checked for a genetic disorder, that he was not the biological father of ANY of his 3 children. It turned out that his spouse had all three of them with some other guy. Unfortunately for the cuckolded husband, the law in Texas at the time was that you had to support any child born during the marriage even if proven not to be yours. This was bases on old English common law formulated well before DNA testing. I recall the courts were sympathetic to this man but stated it was up to the Legislature to fix things.
I had a buddy that went to a 6 month military course, came home and found his wife 3 months pregnant. And she wanted to “work on the marriage.”
I told him to get the divorce immediately, and to stipulate that he was out of state. I was afraid that the divorce would go through, and then she would re-file for child support. Especially if he got deployed, then he’d be a deadbeat dad. Not a good thing for an officer.
In many States, caseworkers will pressure a boyfriend not to contest paternity by exaggerating the possibility that the mother will form a lasting relationship with him. By the time she cuts him off, he is told that his right to demand a DNA test has lapsed. In such cases, I would favor a robust civil equivalent to the Miranda rule: a waiver of DNA testing cannot be assumed, without solid documentation that the putative father was aware of his rights and knowingly waived them.
I am somewhat less sympathetic to a cuckolded husband: as long as the child is raised to respect him as a father, he gets the same psychological benefits as other married fathers. (But if the mother has poisoned the child’s mind against him, that is another matter.)