If you're male, Texas does want you.  After all, there might be some child support you could pay.  And if you're Attorney General Gregg Abbott, it really makes no difference that you're not the child's father, just give him your name and he'll be glad to take a default judgment against you.  No muss, no fuss and the Lone Star State will get that many more federal dollars.  So come on down, we'd love to "have" you.

This article is about as good a one as I've read about all the different ways a man in Texas can be trapped into paying for a child who's not his (Dallas Observer, 4/2/09).  It discusses in detail how Texas law favors paternity fraud, how the AG's office routinely strips men of their rights, how "notice" of hearings in child support cases often consists of a letter mailed to a wrong address.  That's how a default judgment can get taken against the wrong man, and once it is, his chances of ever getting off the hook become vanishingly small.

The article deals with one man, "Antonio," who began to get the message that his children weren't his when they were 5 and 7 years old.  Unfortunately for him, the Texas statute of limitations on DNA testing in child support and custody cases is four years.  Apparently that statute starts to run when the child is born, so Antonio was out of luck.  But one judge ordered DNA testing anyway; the results proved he was not the father but the appellate court ordered the results sealed.  The fish was hooked and they were not going to let him go.

As an aside, it should come as no surprise that this type of legal chicanery happens mostly to poor and uneducated men.  Those who don't know their rights and who can't afford an attorney are the ones the AG's office is most happy to prey upon.

And finally, the article talks about two courageous judges in Dallas County who tried to do the right thing - order genetic testing in paternity fraud cases - only to be slapped down by appellate courts.  More astonishing still is the its description of the vendetta conducted by the Attorney General's Office against those two judges.  Apparently, Abbott's office solicited affidavits from its own attorneys on which it hoped to base a complaint against one of the judges.

To thicken the plot still further, one of those attorneys refused to sign the affidavit, saying the "facts" stated in it weren't true.  She was fired and now has sued the Office of the Attorney General alleging her discharge was because she refused to perjure herself.  Those are just her allegations, and the civil suit is pending.  Read about it here (Law.com, 5/19/09).

No article would be complete without some totally inane excuses made for the system as it is.  According to those apologists, allowing men to actually learn whether they're a child's father or not would "destabilize" the family.  Just how stable a family is in which the mother has an extramarital affair, gives birth to a child who's not her husband's and proceeds as if nothing is amiss, these people don't explain.

They also don't explain how tagging the wrong man for support while letting the actual father off the hook encourages men to be responsible for the children they father.  

And let's be clear; there are countless situations in which courts don't give a tinker's 'damn' about family stability.  If they did, they'd outlaw divorce in families with minor children.  After all, what's more destabilizing to a child than divorce?

So the argument that requiring the actual father to be the one to support the child would unacceptably destabilize the child is a red herring. 

The Dallas Observer piece is long, but it's an excellent primer on the some of the many ways family courts are unabashedly anti-dad.

Thanks to John for the heads-up on both articles.

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