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Unlike body sovereignty, which is never legally given up, money is annually required by law from each citizen. There can be no equating body sovereignty and money.
When your father was trying to be proven the father, were DNA tests available?
Your other posts only show a man who ignored a legal summons. I agree that that situation is pretty stupid, BUT it's also incredibly rare that you'll end up with mistaken identity, and if he HAD called the court (which is the sensible thing to do if you receive CERTIFIED mail that isn't yours), it wouldn't have happened. I don't think he should honestly be on the hook when it's clear this was a paperwork error, but this is WAY closer to the credit collection agencies that continuously hound the wrong John Smith than it has to do with child support cases.
I suppose you do bring up a good point though. It is true that it is possible, in SOME states, for you to be named the father without a DNA test or a voluntary paternity acknowledgement, since some states will issue default judgements against fathers who don't show up to the court date to determine paternity. I suppose I didn't think of the fact that some people will actually ignore a legal summons.
However, much of what your sites talk about are guys who SIGNED pieces of paper saying, "yes, I'm the dad", then realized they weren't and wanted out of the contract. I don't know how it works in your state, but I sat through a lady telling my ex(now ex, we were together at the time) to NOT sign the paper unless he was 100% sure he was the dad, that he only had 60 days from the time he signed to contest it, that he really REALLY shouldn't sign unless he was absolutely positive, that even if it turned out, a year from now he wasn't the biological father the paper was binding, and all of that over and over for about 20 minutes. THEN I had to watch her insist on talking to him in the hall for a further 10 minutes before she'd let him sign the paper. When you've just vaginally delivered a 9.5 pound baby fathered by the only man you've ever been with, it's pretty upsetting to have someone insinuate that you're a lying whore for half an hour. Yet, I knew why they did it, and was patient through the whole thing. My ex signed the paper. (Ironically, a few years later, he decided to start claiming my son wasn't his.) Maybe states are different, but in Texas it's very clear that the paper is a done deal and that you shouldn't sign it if you aren't positive the kid is yours.
I'm sorry you had such a rough time getting a DNA test for your son. The law was on your side though, and you got it in the end. People dodging legal service and disobeying court orders are pretty much par for the course in the custody game though, so it's not really unusual to have delays of several months either way. In your case, you got the raw end of the stick, but it's just as often (probably more often) that mothers have to support children on their own for months or years before the Dad can be legally ordered to pay.
I have to ask, were you married to your son's mother? I thought you said you were. If you were, that changes the game on "legal father" as I mentioned. If not, I'm wondering why your lawyer thought you could still be named the father. I was just looking through the Virginia Family Code, and it looks like voluntary AOP, paternity test, or failure to respond to the suit are the only ways you could be named father.
As for the punishment of women who sabotage condoms... try proving THAT in court. Unless you seriously want to tie up family courts for years, you'd have to be able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she did indeed do that. Even then, I'll only agree to that if you agree to also prosecute men who claim to have had vasectomies!
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@DDD - DNA tests weren't used in PA when my father was accused so it happened a bit more back then.
Legal summons or no, a man who is not the father should not be named the father unless the guy wants to be the father. Anything else is wrong.
If a man is deceived to be the father, sign the paper, and later finds out he is not the father... He should then be allowed to not be the father if he so chooses.
It took years for me to get where I am with my daughter.
At the time she was born I was married to my ex. There was doubt about me being the father from the way the situation played out. Anyone would have felt the same. One month after the baby was born she (ex) abandoned me in Montana and moved back to Virginia (I was stationed out in Montana). She also cheated on me even while we were dating as well as her "part-time job" she had when we first met (I didn't know about this until much later). <-- In my defense, I was 18, stupid, and a virgin... So of course this seemed like the ideal woman! lol...
As for the men who claim to have had vasectomies... Sure! Burn them! Get it on tape or record it somehow... I'm all for fair play.
here is a website dedicated to this sort of topic. I'm sure they have more links and statistics about this sort of thing. http://www.maketherealdadpay.org/Posts: 91 | Registered: Jan 2011
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KirKis - the legal summons clause is necessary because so many people will run from the DNA test for years otherwise. It isn't fair for a child not to be supported for YEARS because his "father" doesn't care.
In cases where they do end up finding out a different man is the dad though... well, I think there should be some consideration if the man wasn't married and hasn't actively parented. However, biology isn't, and has never been the END all of being a parent. Once you assume a parental role in a child's life, I think it's a very tricky thing to sever that relationship. It isn't JUST CS that's being severed, but a whole lot of other things defined by a legal parent/child relationship as well. That gets harder.
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I think they should simply make a dna test mandatory at birth. Then if the man signs anyway, he knows what he is signing up for.
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DNA tests are expensive. The number of cases where the presumed father isn't really the father aren't large enough to justify the expense and other risks associated with DNA testing everyone at birth.
DNA tests aren't fool proof. Mistakes do get made and the more you test, the more mistakes will be made. Imagine the harm that would be caused to a happy family if the father were determined to not be the real father because of a lab mistake.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: DNA tests are expensive. The number of cases where the presumed father isn't really the father aren't large enough to justify the expense and other risks associated with DNA testing everyone at birth.
If you don't DNA test every baby then you can't say that there isn't enough of this going on to justify the expense and other risks. This can be going on all the time but you won't know because you didn't check them all.
Thats like me saying that illegal drugs aren't a problem in America because I only know 4 people who do it.
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Don't be ridiculous. You don't have to test everyone to know how common something is, you only need to test a representative sample. Numerous studies have been done. In the population at large, paternal discrepancy occurs in 3 - 4% of the population but some groups have much higher rates than others. The rates are much higher among those who are young, poor and neither married nor in a long term relationship. In married couples, the paternal discrepancy rate is less than 1 in 100.
[ July 07, 2011, 07:39 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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In related news, there are a small number of cities starting to use DNA testing to match dogs with crap that is lying around.
quote:DNA registration of pets, and subsequent DNA identification of wayward dung — but it seems to be slowly, slowly gaining acceptance. The Israeli city Petah Tikvah gave it a try, and now the New York Post reports (and Gothamist follows) about an apartment complex in Rockville Center, Long Island, that’s using the DNA method to punish owners who don’t pick up after their dogs.
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Don't be ridiculous. You don't have to test everyone to know how common something is, you only need to test a representative sample. Numerous studies have been done. In the population at large, paternal discrepancy occurs in 3 - 4% of the population but some groups have much higher rates than others. The rates are much higher among those who are young, poor and neither married nor in a long term relationship. In married couples, the paternal discrepancy rate is less than 1 in 100.
lolz. First, I'd love to see your source for these statistics. Secondly, based on the http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html website I see 311,712,150 in America. That is a lot of people. Even if this happens to "3 - 4% of the population"... that is more than enough to warrent some protection in the law books.
Also take into consideration people already damaged by this, currently, and will be damaged.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I think they should simply make a dna test mandatory at birth. Then if the man signs anyway, he knows what he is signing up for.
Why mandatory? If the man wants a DNA test, he can get one done. Why should we force this expense on people who don't want it?
Honestly, this whole line seems like complaining about an already solved problem. People are freely able to get paternity tests done. What more is needed?
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I'm not sure exactly how much it is, but I found some online for $80, and I would think that the cost (if made mandatory) would drop precipitously. It just strikes me as being fair that if you are going to have a legally binding agreement to be a child's parent, that you know if you are. Sure it would be a waste in most cases. If I was offered one, I'd decline, I trust my wife explicitly. But by making it requirement before an official "father" could be declared, it would remove most of the problems which have been brought up in this thread.
It is entirely possible that it is killing a mosquito with tnt, but that little sucker would be dead. *shrug*
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I think before you could do a mandatory test, you need to determine the accuracy rate of the DNA test. You have numerous points where contamination can occur while taking the sample, labeling properly, mailing, etc. It would be kinda cool to find out frequency of chimeras in human population. I have heard of one properly tested and documented after her kids didn't match up with her DNA. I imagine they are very rare, but when we hit the whole population, it might be a frequency worth knowing.
As far as costs, I can see many people who would find having the entire population's DNA profile recorded at birth to be worth a large amount of money.
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quote:Secondly, based on the http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html website I see 311,712,150 in America. That is a lot of people. Even if this happens to "3 - 4% of the population"... that is more than enough to warrent some protection in the law books.
Raw numbers of people are kind of meaningless. In a population of over 300 million, there will be a lot of people with even the rarest of conditions. There are already many legal protections for false paternity. No is arguing there should be no protection. The question is whether the protections you are recommending would be of overal benefit to society.
There are more issues at hand than whether or not some men are legally require to support children they aren't biologically related too.
The consequences of mandatory genetic screening for paternity for all newborns have the potential to have rather traumatic effects on families.
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quote: The consequences of mandatory genetic screening for paternity for all newborns have the potential to have rather traumatic effects on families.
Are you suggesting that a false negative would hurt families (which I would agree with) or that a real negative would hurt families (which I would disagree with, I would say that the cheating wife who cuckolded her husband hurt her family).
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In some ways, the paternity rules are also designed to protect men, though the fact that this doesn't come up in discussion is kinda interesting. Imagine you have raised a kid for 10 years. Now you get a paternity test for some reason and find out, this kid isn't yours. Would you really want to just dump the kid and be done with it? Or would this child still be your child? The courts are going to say this is still your child, that those ten years you spent bonding mean something. My cousin, who knew his wife cheated on him and one of his sons isn't his, got custody of the boy in the divorce. If his ex were to come back and say, hey, you have no genetic link to this child and try to take full custody, with no connection to his son, he would be devastated. This is his child, regardless of blood. And I think that is a good thing, for men and children. You can bond without worrying that someday that child will be taken because of infidelity. I know a lot of people say they don't want to adopt becuase what if the mom comes back and takes the kid. The laws make sure a dad doesn't have to worry about that.
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That is a good point scholarette, and a point in favor of paternity testing at birth...like I nsaid before, if it doesn't match, then the man knows what he is signing up for.
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As has been mentioned, paternity tests are easily available all over the country to anyone who wants them. This isn't an issue that needs government intrusion-the capability to protect themselves to the furthest extent possible already exists for men, and it's known. They don't even have to let the mother know they're doing it, in fact.
This problem is already solved.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: That is a good point scholarette, and a point in favor of paternity testing at birth...like I nsaid before, if it doesn't match, then the man knows what he is signing up for.
Is it? I believe you have a two year old son and a infant daughter (correct me if I'm wrong). If you found out tomorrow that he was not your biological son, would you wish you had known the day he was born? Would you wish you had divorced your wife that day, never formed the bond you have with your son and never had your daughter? I don't know the answer to those questions, but certainly for many people the rewards of parenting and family life are worth the risk of parenting someone who doesn't share there genes. Isn't the bond of having nurtured a child much stronger than the genetic link.
Then think about from your son's perspective. If you aren't his biological father, would he be better off without you in his life? What if it was your second child who turned out to not be yours rather than the first -- would you and your children be better off knowing this? In what way?
Finally, consider the worst case scenario. Genetic tests aren't always reliable. If there is a 1% chance of the test coming back negative when you really are the father and then (as a married person) the chances that a negative result is wrong about actually a little greater than the chances that you really aren't the father. Would mandatory maternity testing be a good thing if tens of thousands of people, who were really the genetic father of their children, were falsely found not to be? If that happened only 1 time in a thousand, that would mean 300,000 such errors if everyone in the US were tested and far more people than that would be effected (father, child and mother at a minimum for each test).
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I would absolutely want to know, and would be better off for knowing it as soon as possible. If my wife was the kind of woman (she isn't even a tiny tiny bit) who would let me raise another man's son, she would likely continue to fool around on me, and one day eventually, I would likely find out, and it would lead to divorce and a messy messy messy custody case, one that would hurt even worse as I would fight for my (read as those I raised) children like I had fought for nothing else in my life.
If I found out sooner, then the children would not have their lives torn to shreds by having their family explode. It wouldn't be great, but it is hardly a great scenario.
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As to the test being wrong, I would not believe the first test anyway if it said I wasn't the father. I would want and pay for at least four more.
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Why is it necessary, given that the remedy is already available, that it be forced on people?
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: [sarcasm]Thanks, that's a great idea boots! What would I ever do without you?[/sarcasm]
Yes. I got that.
Perhaps, on your own, you could realize that even ounces of prevention, if there are enough of them, can weigh one down more than the rare pound of cure.
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Somehow a "suggestion" to make something mandatory doesn't seem "suggestiony". It might make more sense to suggest testing to those individuals who are in doubt and who want those doubts resolved.
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The idea behind making it mandatory is that it would it catch bastards that would otherwise slip through the cracks and cause problems latter.
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I understand that. Again, I think that, given the actual risk, your remedy is an overreaction.
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Didn't we have a big long thread from maybe Clive about why everyone should have to have a paternity test cause women are lying tramps?
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I thought for a second you said "flying tramps"...and my mind went to..."Is it a bird? a plane? not it's a slut!"
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Didn't we have a big long thread from maybe Clive about why everyone should have to have a paternity test cause women are lying tramps?
Yes. It was titled "Mandatory Paternity Tests." I saved a copy of it before it got deleted because it was so surreal.
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Yep. Been here before. It was also either part of a thread or at about the sae time as a thread about how unfair it is that women can get abortions while men have no choice about child support.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Didn't we have a big long thread from maybe Clive about why everyone should have to have a paternity test cause women are lying tramps?
I was just going to mention what an irony it was that we came back to this in this thread.
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Well i'd just like to add that I have had a DNA test before and it isn't just "Positive or Negative". It is a Statistical %. Mine was 99.9%. Which the court found to be high enough to declare me the biological father.
I would like to think that if the test was a requirement at birth, the hosipital can perform the test without anyone knowing or thinking about it. They only need to point anything out to the father if it doesn't match up.
Sure the solution (DNA testing) is out there. The problem is men will be reluctant to do it. Not many men sleep with their loved one and not think that the baby isn't theirs unless the mother tells them. Having the test a requirement would allow the man to be sure without angering the woman.
If you said to the woman "I think this baby might not be mine, I want a DNA test"... you'll never hear the end of it! If it was a requirement... that problem can be avoided. You will still be looked at as trusting the woman all while keeping you safe too. It is a win-win for the man. It prevents any parental fraud. If the test came back 0% ... Well you have a lot more to worry about then whether or not you want to be the father of the child!
@Rabbit - "There are more issues at hand than whether or not some men are legally require to support children they aren't biologically related too."
Wow, the "more important matters" line. I feel that if you were the one going through it you'd feel differently about the significance of it.
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quote:They only need to point anything out to the father if it doesn't match up.
They wouldn't need to point anything out to the presumptive father, even then. In fact, I can imagine very few situations in which any good would come of it.
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quote:If you said to the woman "I think this baby might not be mine, I want a DNA test"... you'll never hear the end of it!
Again, this is a problem that already has a solution. Paternity tests can be requested without informing the mother.
On a sort of opposite side, paternity tests cannot (ethically) be performed without the father's consent. If this test is required to declare fatherhood, does this mean that a father who doesn't want to give people access to his DNA cannot legally be declared the father?
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quote:If you said to the woman "I think this baby might not be mine, I want a DNA test"... you'll never hear the end of it! If it was a requirement... that problem can be avoided. You will still be looked at as trusting the woman all while keeping you safe too.
So...there should be a major expense and violations of privacy for everyone because some men are too big of pansies to state their minds and deal with the fallout?
A relationship where this issue is a possibility but can't be discussed and the man is running away from having a real conversation isn't worth saving. It's going to die anyway.
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@Tom - "They wouldn't need to point anything out to the presumptive father, even then. In fact, I can imagine very few situations in which any good would come of it." Why wouldn't they need to tell the father "your not the father"? You make no sense to me. Please clarify.
@Squicky - "Paternity tests can be requested without informing the mother." Sure, but why would a man request this unless he already has a suspicion? What about the unsuspecting man? Too bad your screwed?
@Katharina - Major expense? Not really. Violations of privacy? They run tests on the baby when he/she is born anyways. The only real violation after that is to the man. Is that what your talking about?
So lets see... A woman who is pregnant, already has wacked out hormones... is being told by the man that he has doubts about the baby being his and he wants a DNA test. Of course the pregnant woman should smile warmly and say "ok, no problem, lets test it to be sure to put your mind at ease." ... Yeah ok - Not going to happen.
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quote:@Squicky - "Paternity tests can be requested without informing the mother." Sure, but why would a man request this unless he already has a suspicion? What about the unsuspecting man? Too bad your screwed?
errr...Every man has the option of getting a paternity test done. If they choose not to use that, that's their business, even if it is a mistake on their part. At some point, you have to stop treating putative adults as children, especially when what you're talking about is a government mandated unnecessary medical procedure that intrudes on people's privacy. There's a line of compelling interest that you need to cross and, as far as I can tell, you haven't even tried to show how that state has any interest in this at all.
We've stopped talking about men paying child support for children who aren't theirs and whom they don't want to support. They're generally going to get a paternity test. So what, we're now forcing DNA tests on every presumptive father (and, as far as I can tell, denying legal fatherhood to those who object to having their DNA taken against their will) because there are some men in stable relationship who may not choose to get paternity tests done and will thus mistakenly think that the child they are raising is their own?
At best, that would call for a campaign to make fathers aware that they can and maybe should ask for a paternity test and even that is something I think would be stupid to spend government money on.
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quote:A woman who is pregnant, already has wacked out hormones... is being told by the man that he has doubts about the baby being his and he wants a DNA test. Of course the pregnant woman should smile warmly and say "ok, no problem, lets test it to be sure to put your mind at ease." ... Yeah ok - Not going to happen.
So...women are irrational and crazy and men should be enabled to run away from having a sincere conversation.
What a pathetic bunch of men. And what a sexist assumption.
If a hard thing ("I think you had sex with another man.") needs to be said, then say it. If you think she's been sleeping around and lying about it, why are you pussyfooting around her in order to save the relationship? It's already dead.
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A few things to keep in perspective. There is a form you sign, that is legally binding making you the father regardless of dna, and you only have a very limited amount of time to do anything about it before you are on the hook for life.
Of course this is done for the interest of the child, but if this were not the case, there would be no good reason for a mandatory paternity test.
Second, I don't think we are talking about the dna being kept on record here, just a simple comparison between potential father and the child.
Third, I don't think it is a situation where without a dna test, you can not be legally declared the father (yes, that is the obvious assumption by the word mandatory) but instead a situation where you can sign a waiver and be excluded from testing and still be declared legal father, but you acknowledge that if at a later date it turns out that you are not the biological father, then you are still responsible.
All and all I agree with the majority that paternity testing is currently an option, an option that can be done without the knowledge of the mother and that is good enough, but I also think that people are not acknowledging the real benefits of such a plan.
*edited for clarity
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It might make more sense to suggest testing to those individuals who are in doubt and who want those doubts resolved.
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