I seem to be in a bit of a rut with this paternity fraud issue, but the article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on the subject has spawned a good many commenters.  Some of those commenters, like this one, raise some interesting points (Scripps Howard, 11/25/09).

It's good to see writers like Bonnie Erbe take on the issue of paternity fraud.  Reading her piece, it's clear that she hasn't thought a lot about it and that we're getting a sort of visceral response.  And her response is appropriate:

I cannot imagine the pain suffered by the men who've been "tricked" into believing paternity...

There is probably no worse damage a woman can do to a man than to lie about (or not admit the possibility of) alternative biological fatherhood to him.

That's a bit over the top.  In fact we can all imagine how a woman might do worse damage to a man than to lie about paternity.  But still it's clear enough that Erbe's heart is in the right place.

Where she doesn't go with her thinking is where we've already been - to how to prevent paternity fraud long-term.  To me, mandatory DNA testing at birth is the obvious answer.  Yes it costs money up-front, but it saves money, time, effort and anguish in the long run.  It promotes honesty in romantic relationships.  More importantly, it places accurate information in the hands of men who need to know what their relationship to a child actually is.

But Erbe's focus is closer to home.  Mandatory testing, even if enacted nationwide tomorrow, would still leave a lot of men being fathers to children who aren't theirs, and a similar number without children who are.  And that's what Erbe discusses; how can family courts and state legislatures deal with existing cases?

Erbe has some extreme ideas that seem to me to be the products of too little thought.  She suggests that when a man is found to be fathering a child who's not his, he should automatically get custody and the mother pay child support.  However much that may satisfy one's visceral need for retribution against a deceitful mother, it ignores whether the child would benefit from that arrangement.  One-size-fits-all solutions usually end up being wrong in a good number of cases.  What if the father couldn't or didn't want to care for the child?  What if the mother couldn't pay support?  And what about the biological dad?  He's still nowhere to be found.

As I alluded to in a previous post, I think the "two fathers" approach is acceptable, albeit not ideal. 

The goal of family courts should be to connect the biological father to his parental obligations while not disconnecting the nurturing father from his right to a continuing relationship with the child.  And of course the law should not cut off the child's relationship with the man it understands as its dad.  If a man has acted as father for a number of years and then learns he's not, it's outrageous to suggest that he simply abandon that role.  He suffers and the child suffers if that happens.  But at the same time, we want the man who did contribute to the child's conception to take up his responsibilities towards it.

That all strongly suggests a two-dad arrangement.  To me, that would look like this: the biological father and mother have the obligation of support.  Along with that, for the dad, comes the right to some form of legal custody and visitation.  The nurturing father would get to decide what he wants his role to be.  If he abandons the child, as I suspect few would, he would have no obligations.  If he elects to remain in the child's life, he can do so, because his connection to the child has been established and shouldn't be broken if possible.  I would make the nurturing father's option to abandon the child a permanent choice.  If he makes that decision, he can't come back later and demand a redo.

Admittedly, that's not a perfect solution.  Indeed, if there are any perfect solutions to the problem of paternity fraud, I don't know what they are.  That may be the strongest argument for preventing it in the first place.  But two fathers, each with rights and one with obligations, looks like the best we can do.

A tangled web indeed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Paternity Fraud, Paternity Issues. You can trackback from your own site.