One Child, Two “Fathers” Paying Child Support
Some men’s activists were rightly pointing to the outcome of Department of Revenue v. Ryan R. in Massachusetts as an example of just how out-of-whack the child support system is. In this case, separate courts ruled that two men declared the father of her child and required to pay child support.
Susan (no last names are given in court proceedings) cheated on her husband, Sheldon, and conceived a child by her lover. Three years later, Susan initiated divorce proceedings against her husband. Despite the fact that Sheldon was not the biological father of the child, he was nonetheless ordered to pay child support, with the court in that case ruling that,
. . . the husband is the only ‘father’ that the child has known during his life, and as the husband has cared throughout the marriage for the child and there is a bond that exists between the child and the husband . . . the husband is the ‘de facto’ father of the child.
The problem for Susan, however, was that Sheldon was also ‘de facto’ bankrupt. So she also initiated child custody efforts against the biological father of the child, Ryan. Ryan resisted such efforts, saying that the divorce proceedings in Susan and Sheldon’s marriage had already established Sheldon as the ‘de facto’ father of the child and, as such, Ryan shouldn’t be liable for child support.
A Massachusetts Appeals court rejected that argument and ordered Ryan to pay child support.
Presumably Susan is kicking herself for not figuring out a way to have the state force additional “de facto” fathers and any number of other unrelated men to contribute to caring for her child.
Sources:
Department of Revenue vs. Ryan R.. Massachusetts Appeals Court, November 2, 2004.
The One Child, Two “Fathers” Paying Child Support by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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