Family Court Judge Sheds Light on Unfair Child Support Practices inTexas

Wow...

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2008-0...ces-in-texas/1

wrote in message
...
Wow...

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2008-0...ces-in-texas/1

The article doesn't mention this, but what a glaring example of how people
who benefit from the current CS system will fight to maintain the status quo
instead of being willing to accept changes to make it better. Keeping all
of their power is more important than fairness and justice for the poor
smucks who get sucked into their game.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2008-0...ces-in-texas/1

And here it is (without pictures or captions) before it's taken down and
disappears forever.
---------------------------------------------
Family Court Judge Sheds Light on Unfair Child Support Practices in Texas

Judge David Hanschen lets men challenge whether the kids they support are
theirs. And the Texas Attorney General's Office is ****ed.

By Megan Feldman
Published: April 3, 2008

Family court Judge David Hanschen says Texas railroads poor, uneducated men
into paying child support when their paternity may be in question.

The problem began the night his wife didn't come home. He had left his
construction job, then fed their kids. He put them to bed, watched TV and
tried to sleep. Often his wife worked past midnight at an Arlington
restaurant, but it was 4 a.m. and she was still gone. Another few hours
passed. Finally, she called. She'd been out with friends. Could he pick her
up?

Antonio grew suspicious. Had she been with another man? No, of course not,
she told him. But in his mind, it was the first crack in a marriage that
continued to crumble.

Financial stress compounded their problems, causing terrible fights. The
conflict reached a fever pitch in 2005. He left and moved in with his
mother. Shortly after that, he got a phone call from a relative of his
wife's. Your youngest daughter, he told Antonio, she isn't yours. She
belongs to another man. Antonio refused to believe it. But after his mother
heard similar rumors, even she began talking about how the little girl
didn't look like their side of the family.

Over the next 18 months, Antonio tried to visit his children, but his wife
wouldn't allow it. There were more fights—his wife claimed he hit her and
slammed her against a car, which he denied. She moved and he couldn't find
her. Then, last summer, shortly before his wife filed for divorce, Antonio
received a letter from the Texas Attorney General's Office, the state agency
charged with enforcing child support obligations.

The letter instructed him to go to a Dallas County child support court where
in August 2007, he faced making monthly payments equal to 30 percent of his
take-home pay, which was around $1,500.
Antonio (not his real name) requested DNA testing. If what his relatives
said was true, he argued, why should he have to support a child who wasn't
biologically his? He would later learn that under Texas law, a man is
presumed to be the legal father of any child born during his marriage to the
child's mother, and if he questions his paternity, he has only four years to
challenge it. All of Antonio's children were older than 4 by the time he and
his wife went to court.

What happened next focused attention on the growing availability of DNA
testing and caused a legal uproar that ricocheted from the halls of the
Dallas County family courts to the Austin headquarters of Republican
Attorney General Greg Abbott.

On January 14, family court Judge David Hanschen ordered Antonio and both of
his daughters, ages 5 and 7, to undergo paternity testing immediately. The
next day, lawyers within the attorney general's office who represent the
state on behalf of the mother and children—asked the 5th Court of Appeals in
Dallas for an emergency order halting the testing. These lawyers cited the
four-year statute of limitations and argued that because Antonio was already
the legal father, he had no grounds to request DNA testing and dispute that
he was the biological father.

The Court of Appeals agreed and ordered that no testing be conducted. But it
was too late: On January 16, the lab released the results, which placed the
probability of Antonio fathering either of the girls at zero percent. On
January 25, appeals court Justice Carolyn Wright ordered that the test
results be sealed and kept from the children. This was followed in March by
the court's written opinion that slapped Hanschen for ordering the testing
in the first place and ordered the DNA results destroyed.

Hanschen refuses to comment on specific cases, but says that in certain
situations, a court's denial of DNA testing may violate a father's
constitutional right to equal protection and the legal system itself may be
condoning fraud. "In my court, the truth does not have a statute of
limitations," he says. "It's just the truth, and if we have the means to
know the truth, we should."

DNA testing has garnered widespread attention for freeing the innocent. Yet
the growing availability of biological testing in paternity cases
complicates efforts to balance the rights of fathers with the interests of
children, who could be emotionally damaged by losing a father figure simply
because he doesn't share their DNA. "Part of the problem," Hanschen says,
"is science has gotten so ahead of the law that the law hasn't been able to
catch up."

Hanschen, a tall, bearded man with a sober demeanor and deep baritone voice,
has stood out as a maverick at the courthouse since he was elected in 2006
as one of more than 40 Democrats who swept the Dallas County judicial
contests in a partisan sea change. He wears his hair in a ponytail that
hangs down to his lower back and has been mocked by conservatives such as
former state Republican Party chair Tom Pauken for being a "New Age" judge
who chomps on "weird nuts and seeds" and has lawyers "sit under a Buddha
which is prominently placed in his conference room." Hanschen calls the
criticism "scurrilous." "Because I have a Buddha I bought in Thailand five
years ago they think I'm operating some kind of cult in here," he says.
"Come on, it's an amazing piece of art."

Aesthetics aside, through a year's worth of unorthodox moves regarding the
way Texas enforces child support laws, the judge now finds himself in a
battle against the largest law enforcement agency in the state. In February
2007, he complained that the attorney general's office was deceptively
asking men to sign away valuable rights when they first appeared in child
support court, and last summer he declared that the office's process for
notifying presumed fathers of their court dates violated due process.

His recent authorization of paternity testing may have been the last straw
for the office. E-mails viewed by the Dallas Observer and interviews with
assistant attorneys general reflect that in early February of this year,
supervising attorneys within the office's Child Support Division launched a
concerted campaign to collect affidavits from nearly a dozen staff
lawyers—in some cases exerting pressure on them—with the apparent goal of
filing a complaint alleging judicial misconduct against Hanschen and
possibly fellow family court Judge Lynn Cherry. (She sides with Hanschen on
many of these issues.)

Whatever the motivation of the attorney general's office, its response to
challenges from these Dallas judges seems heavy-handed. "It's very rare,"
says University of Texas School of Law professor Jack Sampson, who co-wrote
the Texas Family Code. "The way you're supposed to correct judges' errors is
by appealing, not by attacking the judge directly."

But there is much at stake for the attorney general's office. A powerful
state bureaucracy accustomed to getting its way, the office touts its dogged
pursuit of deadbeat dads and casts itself as an advocate for children. The
office's Child Support Division is a prized component of Attorney General
Abbott's administration. The office has been nationally recognized for
leading the country in child support collections, with a record $2.3 billion
for its 2007 fiscal year. Since his election in 2002, Abbott has made child
support a major focus of his office and used it as a rallying cry in his
2006 re-election campaign.

But to critics, the office's unwillingness to acknowledge that some of its
practices may railroad poor, uneducated men into financial hardship is
evidence of more sinister motives. The office receives federal funds based
in part on the amount of child support that it collects and distributes,
giving the Child Support Division a budgetary incentive to close as many
cases as it can, no matter whose rights it might trample.

Hanschen has also drawn criticism, with some observers saying he "sets
himself above the law" and legislates from the bench. But his supporters
counter that he's merely shedding light on the problematic laws that govern
the messy matters of sex, fidelity and truth in paternity matters. In fact,
lawmakers and fathers' rights activists have been lobbying across the state
and the country for changes to a body of laws that are crucial for assisting
women and children but can also saddle the wrong men with onerous child
support obligations, seized assets and even jail time.
————
It was a Tuesday morning in late February. A dozen women sat on benches on
the third floor of the George Allen Sr. Courts Building, which houses Dallas
County's IV-D courts, where assistant attorneys general champion the child
support rights of low-income moms.

Some of the women held swaddled infants; others chased after toddlers who
skipped down the hallway laughing, blissfully ignorant of the proceedings
that brought their mothers there. While a few sullen men talked on their
cell phones in low voices, a middle-aged black woman complained to a young
mother. "I don't understand why they have you come here and sit so someone
can mediate—we can mediate just fine," she said, shaking her head about the
errant father who wasn't supporting his kids. "It just adds up and adds up
and adds up."

Inside one of the three packed IV-D courtrooms—with its voluminous child
support docket—Associate Judge Sean Finn scolded a tall blond man in a suit
who had consistently missed his payments. "You need to understand that you
need to pay your child support each and every month, not just before you
come to court," the judge said loudly, his face stern.

The man nodded.

"She's losing time off her job to come down here and get money from you that
you're not paying, and I don't want to bring her down here again."

These are the types of scenes most people think of when they hear the words
"child support" or "deadbeat dads"—frustrated single mothers who turn to the
state for help as they struggle to care for their children while thwarted by
men who skip town, won't work or simply refuse to pay.

Hanschen, who as a judge has sent dozens of deadbeat dads to jail, is more
than a little familiar with such problems. It's just that other problems
seem to be largely ignored.

"The vast majority of the work the Attorney General does is necessary—it's
providing legal services to poor people, and we need to have child support,"
he says. "There are, however, some huge holes that have been created by
these laws."

On a March afternoon in the chambers of his 254th Court, Hanschen wears his
trademark gray hair pulled back in a long braid. His intense blue eyes and
gray beard make him look a bit like a bookish Gandalf the Grey. Speaking
slowly and methodically, he lays out his concerns about the laws governing
the presumption of paternity, especially the four-year statute of
limitations. "I'm not out to destroy anything. I just want the right dad
paying child support or going to jail for not paying."

Twelve years ago when in private practice, Hanschen represented a client who
came to him after a girlfriend he hadn't seen in a decade showed up with a
10-year-old and announced it was his. The man, a barber in Oak Cliff, took
the woman at her word and signed an Acknowledgement of Paternity, the legal
document that makes a man the legal father until the child reaches 18. The
man later became suspicious and got a DNA test that showed he wasn't the
father. But it was too late. "They hit him with $32,000 in back child
support," Hanschen says. "He lost his business and went underground."

As a judge, Hanschen's first problem with the practices of the attorney
general's Child Support Division occurred in February 2007, shortly after he
had taken the bench. Because he knew he would be hearing many appeals from
the IV-D courts, he decided to learn how things were being done there. He
noticed that when a man arrived, an assistant attorney general would ask him
if he had a lawyer.

If he said no, as most did, the attorney simply told him to sign in.
Hanschen glanced at the signed papers and discovered that the forms were
actually appearance sheets. After the lines for name, address and phone
number, a paragraph at the end stated, "I wish to avail myself of the
jurisdiction of this court and hereby make my appearance in this case for
all purposes." By signing it, Hanschen says, the men were giving up their
right to challenge the court's jurisdiction over them.

After discussing his concerns with several judges and lawyers, he directed
the IV-D judges, as well as the assistant attorneys general in each of the
child support courts, to stop using the forms or to remove the last
paragraph and signature line. The attorney general staffers in one court
only stopped after a conversation that Hanschen describes as "forceful."

Jerry Strickland, the attorney general's communications director, confirms
that these forms are no longer used in Dallas County but defends their use
elsewhere in the state. "They allowed our staff to note who appeared in
court on a given day," Strickland says. "They had no legal effect on the
outcome of parents' cases."

But to Hanschen, there could have been adverse effects. If no one explained
to them their rights and what the form meant, he wonders, what else wasn't
being explained?

UT's Sampson doesn't take as dire a view of the appearance sheets as
Hanschen, noting that the men had already received notice and could still
request DNA testing. But he agreed that the process can be inequitable.
"It's kind of unfair to get someone to sign something they don't
understand," he says. "Some of them can't read, they're poor—so their
chances of understanding everything they sign is the same as you
understanding everything on an insurance policy...And the worst thing here
is it's for 18 years."

Indeed, once unmarried men sign an Acknowledgement of Paternity—either in
the hospital when the child is born or afterward in the IV-D courts,
contesting paternity—with or without DNA proof—can be a daunting task. "If a
man goes out and gets DNA testing that says it's not his child, but it's
after four years, he's screwed," says a local assistant attorney general who
asked not to be named. "You've got 17-year-old kids signing these things,
and they don't even know what they're doing."
When hospital staffers ask fathers to sign the form, the paperwork cites DNA
testing as an option, but young, unwed fathers are unlikely to request it in
front of the mother and her family.

"I had a recent case where both parents were 16," the attorney says. "Both
families are there—when is he supposed to say, 'I want DNA?' He'd be
accusing her of sleeping with someone else." It's important for children to
have fathers, the lawyer adds, but "now you've just allowed a mother to name
whoever she wants to name, and if the guy is gullible or ignorant enough to
sign it, he's stuck."

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2008-0...ces-in-texas/1

Part 2 0f 2

Hanschen's second problem with the Child Support Division procedures arose
last summer, when he heard about a case in which a man, ordered to pay child
support, said he hadn't gotten notice of the proceedings against him. By
law, the attorney general's office may notify presumed fathers of these
proceedings with a first-class letter instead of personal service by a
constable, deputy sheriff or process server. If the man doesn't get the
letter—for example, if his address has changed—and fails to show up for
court, a default judgment is entered against him, and he can no longer
contest paternity or the amount of child support.

These letters, Hanschen says, are not adequate notice. "The Family Code laws
are in conflict. One says you have to be served by a process server, with
instructions to let you know this is serious stuff, as opposed to a one-page
letter that says, 'Come down and talk,'" he maintains. "To give people
proper due process rights, you have to give them proper notice."

Strickland, however, says the Child Support Division does in fact serve most
presumed fathers by a constable or sheriff. But men often dodge service.
"Obviously there are non-custodial parents who are not living up to their
responsibility," he says.

Yet Hanschen isn't the only judge who has problems with the division's
efforts to notify presumed fathers. Family court Judge Tena Callahan, who
also came to the bench in the Democratic sweep, says she's had several child
support cases with the attorney general's office in which inadequate notice
has come up. "It's a problem," she says. "The presumption is they get [the
letter], but sometimes they don't. And next thing they know they're getting
child support taken out of their paychecks."
————
Whether men feel wronged by inadequate notice, misguided legal principles or
dishonest mothers, those who find themselves paying for children who aren't
theirs can turn to advocacy organizations that fight what they call
paternity fraud. Carnell Smith, founder and executive director of
Georgia-based U.S. Citizens Against Paternity Fraud, organized the group
after discovering that a child he'd supposedly fathered with a former
girlfriend and supported to the tune of $40,000 over 11 years wasn't
actually his. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case, but Smith
finally was relieved of the financial burden by legislation, which he has
successfully spearheaded in several states—including Georgia—that allows men
to use DNA tests to disprove previously acknowledged paternity.

Smith says thousands of men across the country have contacted him since he
started the group in 2001, but he also hears from women, mostly the wives of
men wrongly paying child support.

Dallas resident Belinda Odum-Gaston founded Texas Families Against Paternity
Fraud after a lengthy legal battle to free her husband of financial
responsibility for a child he didn't father. He had signed an
Acknowledgement of Paternity after a woman with whom he'd had an affair
claimed he fathered her son.

Odum-Gaston received a statement showing that the attorney general's office
was seizing their joint tax refund to pay child support—her first indication
that her husband had engaged in an affair and fathered a child. She
confronted her husband, who had little contact with the child, and convinced
him to get DNA testing. After test results revealed her husband was not the
biological father, Odum-Gaston hired a private investigator to track down
the real father and confirm his paternity.

"I was devastated [by the affair], but I was more devastated by how my
husband was played," Odum-Gaston says. "I can't do anything about what two
consenting adults did, but I damn sure can do something to protect the
estate I've worked to accumulate."

Though the attorney general's office fought review of the case, the couple
hired an attorney. They were relieved of the child support obligation,
winning a $4,000 judgment against the mother.

To avoid such entanglements, Smith proposes that paternity testing be
required before presumed fathers sign anything. Opponents say it would
reduce fatherhood to biology alone and ruin family stability by allowing men
who have already established fatherly relationships with children to
disappear from their lives.

But to Hanschen and fellow family court judges Cherry and Callahan, the
so-called family integrity protected by current law is often nonexistent.
"What kind of integrity does this family have when someone is perpetrating a
fraud against someone else?" Callahan says. "The law doesn't seem to care."
Cherry agrees, saying more access to paternity testing would cut down on
fraud and give judges more discretion to determine what's best for families
on a case-by-case basis. "You may have a father who says, 'I don't care if
he's not mine, he's my baby,'" she says. "But if there's a question,
especially when there's misrepresentation and fraud, to slam the door shut
[on paternity testing] is an injustice."

"I think the child has an innate right to know who his biological parents
are," Hanschen adds, pointing out the importance of genetic testing for
health reasons such as identifying hereditary diseases. "Part of the Family
Code is that the child's interest overrides everything—I can't figure out
how it's in the child's interest to lie to him about who his parents are."

Jack W. Marr, president of the Family Law Foundation, which lobbies
lawmakers on family law issues, says presumptive fatherhood bears
re-examination by the Texas Legislature. In a one-year period between 2005
and 2006, he says, at least eight cases in which presumed fathers turned out
not to be biological fathers were sent to appeals courts statewide (Hanschen
points out that since most of the division's cases involve indigent men who
can't afford a lawyer much less an appeal, the number of contested cases is
likely much higher). "That tells me that in Texas there's a serious problem
that needs to be addressed," Marr says. "We're trying to solve it."

Recent legislative attempts have been unsuccessful, but the House Committee
on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues is slated to address the problem in
the next legislative session. In the 2007 session, Houston state
Representative Harold Dutton Jr. wrote a bill that would have made DNA
testing available to men in divorce cases, ordered non-biological fathers to
pay no more than $100 per month and allowed them to maintain relationships
with children without necessarily being financially responsible for them.
The bill died in the State Senate.

For now, Marr says, his group has agreed to wait on the "sticky wicket" of
married men and focus its efforts in the next session on resolving the
notice issue by requiring personal service of process. "The whole thing is
based on expediency for the attorney general's office. They don't want to
serve people personally," Marr says. "We're going to address situations
where there are defaults and allow these people to come in and get DNA
testing."
————
The way Antonio found out about his wife's child support claim was fairly
haphazard. He was digging through a pile of mail at his mother's house last
August when he found a letter from the Office of the Attorney General's
Child Support Division. It instructed him to appear in court the following
week. He was surprised and angry. Because his wife hadn't let him see the
children in nearly two years, he says, he tried visiting them in school. But
they were in class, so he left $2,000 with administrators to give to them.

"After all this time not knowing about the kids, she files for child
support?" he says. "I was upset."
On August 30, he appeared in IV-D court, and after Antonio raised the
question of paternity, Judge Finn ordered DNA testing. The attorney
general's office appealed the order, which would become relevant again when
Antonio's wife filed for divorce in September. Her attorney declined to
comment because the case is ongoing.

Antonio hired his own attorney, Kathy Ehmann-Clardy, and on January 14, they
appeared before Hanschen on the issue of DNA testing.

Ehmann-Clardy figured that they had a decent chance of winning: She'd been
involved in a similar case where Hanschen ordered DNA testing for a
divorcing father who had a relationship with his presumed children.

Hanschen didn't disappoint. "It is clearly in the children's best interest
to know who their father is," he announced from the bench. "It is clearly in
the state's best interest to know who the father is so the correct person
can be paying child support...Testing ordered immediately."

In an interview, Hanschen would argue that current law doesn't give fathers
equal protection and requires that a court enforce "a lie" when the truth is
just a lab test away. "I'm bound to uphold the laws of Texas, unless I find
them to be unconstitutional," he says. "People get all upset about the term
'activist judges'—we're not making up laws here, we're saying there's a
problem...and we need the appellate system to sort it out for us."

UT's Sampson says the appellate courts have spoken to the issue and have
consistently upheld the four-year limitation. And that is precisely what the
5th Court of Appeals did on January 16, when not two days after Hanschen
ruled, Justice Wright stayed his order for testing. And then 10 days later,
after the appeals court learned the DNA test already had been conducted, the
appeals court ordered the results sealed.

On March 12, a panel of justices agreed with the attorney general's position
that Hanschen had gone too far by ordering the testing.

"[A]lthough the judge's position is that there should be no statute of
limitations on the truth and it's in the best interests of the children to
know who their father is," wrote Justice Douglas S. Lang, "such
determinations are a matter for the Legislature, not the trial court."

Hanschen counters that if a trial court fails to make a declaration about a
law's shortcomings, there's no way for a higher court to review it. Hanschen
might find himself in a position to review the issue if it comes up in a
subsequent case; he is running for a seat on the all-Republican 5th Court of
Appeals in the November election.

One Dallas family lawyer finds Hanschen's actions "regal" and "ego-driven,"
while maintaining that most lawyers who have considered the subject feel the
four-year statute of limitations is bad law. "But it is the law—and Hanschen
is saying, 'I don't like it, so I'm just not going to follow it,'" the
lawyer says. "He's set himself up as above the law."

Whether Hanschen is a principled jurist or a rogue judge, he is drawing
attention to a controversial area of law that impacts millions nationwide.
"You've got a judge sitting up there saying, 'Hey, there's something wrong
here,'" says Marr, of the Family Law Foundation. "It highlights the
seriousness of the issue, and the problem isn't going to go away just
because there's presently a gotcha clause in the law."
————
In mid-February, rumors began spreading in the courthouse that the attorney
general's office had it out for a couple of the district judges. Hanschen
heard that higher-ups within the Child Support Division had begun collecting
affidavits about him. So did Judge Cherry, who also had clashed with the
attorney general's office over child support issues.

"Several AG employees told me they felt uncomfortable because the people at
the regional office were asking them for negative information about me and
some of the other district judges," Cherry recalls. "I thought it was
bizarre behavior from a government agency."

On February 1, supervisors within the division had begun asking staff
attorneys if they'd ever heard the two judges make derogatory comments about
the office. One assistant attorney general, who requested anonymity, recalls
telling supervisors about an occasion when Hanschen had derided the office.
(The judge has referred to supervising attorneys within the division as
"black-booted government thugs" and "****s." Hanschen admits that he can be
"quite blunt at times.")

Most of the attorneys who were asked to submit complaints against Hanschen
and Cherry assumed their bosses were planning to hold a meeting with the
judges. But later e-mails from James Jones, a senior regional attorney
supervising the Dallas Child Support Division, suggested the attorney
general's office might be planning to file a complaint against these judges
with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

In a February 4 e-mail, Jones wrote, "I want to thank everyone who responded
to my request concerning Judge Hanschen and Judge Cherry. I will respond
individually to everyone who submitted an incident...[A certain assistant
attorney general] will then prepare an affidavit for you to sign...We want
to expedite this in an effort to get all the affidavits to Austin by
Thursday. We need your responses to my individual e-mails ASAP."

To some staffers, this was a red flag. "When I hear affidavit and Austin, I
think you're trying to file a judicial misconduct complaint on someone,"
says one assistant attorney general. "Filing a judicial misconduct charge
against a judge if they haven't done anything—you'd be blackballed. If you
get fired, where you gonna go?"

Many of the division attorneys in Dallas who were contacted agreed to sign
affidavits, but several refused. On February 7, Jones sent this e-mail:
"Some of you have indicated your concern as to what will happen if a
complaint is filed with the SCJC, and that it will be uncomfortable and
unpleasant appearing in the 254th Family District Court after Judge Hanschen
is aware of our complaint...We must protect our AAGs and a motion to recuse
is an absolute necessity." A recusal would mean an attempt to have Hanschen
and Cherry removed from thousands of cases. "Again, I appreciate very much
the courage it took for each of you to step forward," Jones concluded.

On February 8, an assistant attorney general (who declined to speak with the
Observer) refused to complain about the judges. "At this time," he wrote in
a group e-mail, "I do not want to participate in any activity regarding
Judge Hanschen except regular court matters."

Jones replied: "Detail for me why you feel you have the right to disregard
Article 8.03b of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct." (The
ethics rule requires lawyers to report instances of judicial misconduct.)

But the assistant countered: "I took your initial request of us to mean that
you were interested in things that Judge Hanschen and Judge Cherry have done
which we felt were inappropriate. This has now escalated to the point where
you wish me to claim professional misconduct against a district judge. If I
am to risk myself, and my reputation, I certainly want to make sure I have
the grounds to do so." Although the attorney wrote that he did not agree
with some of Hanschen's "methods or motives," he felt they "did not raise a
substantial question as to the judge's fitness for office."

Jones declined to comment for this story, referring all questions to the
attorney general's press office. Strickland, the communications director,
summarized the office's position in a written statement. "Attorneys in our
Dallas-area offices expressed serious concerns about certain judges'
courtroom conduct and perceived bias against the Child Support Division and
the child support collection process," he wrote. "Because that conduct posed
a potential threat to the children who depend upon this office for child
support, more information was sought about certain judges' alleged
misconduct. The objective was an informal gathering of voluntary factual
statements from concerned staff attorneys."

But the relentless manner in which superiors went about gathering these
affidavits raises questions about how voluntary they truly are.

Strickland even acknowledges that staff attorneys have raised concerns about
the statement collection process and said the division is conducting a
review. As for potential complaints against the judges, he says the jury's
still out. "No final decision has yet been made as to whether the underlying
complaints warrant filing a complaint with the Commission on Judicial
Conduct."
————
To Antonio, who is now 30, the legal and political clashes between two
governmental bodies are meaningless. The important thing for him is to
somehow sort out what to do about his broken family and get on with his
life. He wants the lawsuits to be over, but with the recent Court of Appeals
decision and the fact that settling his divorce would mean accepting legal
paternity for all three children, there's no end in sight.

On a recent afternoon, he sits in his lawyer's office and talks about the
three children he once thought were his. He says he misses taking them to
the park and hearing them call him Dad. The girls were just toddlers when he
left, and even though he wasn't much of a "girly" guy, he misses playing
dolls with the older one. When he was granted rights to see them early this
year, his lawyer advised him against visiting the girls if he was going to
contest paternity. It might re-establish their bond and hurt his case. It
was a tough decision, but his bitterness at his wife's betrayal and the
financial hardship of supporting two non-biological children swayed him. He
would see only his son.

In January, father and son were reunited at a Chuck E. Cheese. It was
awkward at first, but after a few rounds of skeeball, the 8-year-old
loosened up and seemed to have fun.

They see each other every weekend now, visiting Antonio's mother and going
to the movies. The boy's 7-year-old sister, meanwhile, is heartbroken. She
doesn't understand why the man she still remembers as her father visits her
brother but not her. During a recent visit with his son, Antonio called his
estranged wife to say he would be late dropping the boy off, and she told
him the girl had been crying all day. Her mother put her on the phone. "She
wanted me to buy her a toy, pick her up," Antonio says, his face somber and
resigned. "I told her, 'Not right now.'"

For now, Antonio hopes that one day, the hearings and the waiting and the
legal fees will come to an end. And as he strives to return to some
semblance of normal life, he tries to remember the truth, and not to think
about the little girl's tears or wonder how things might have been
different.

--
[Any man that's good enough to support a child is good enough to have
custody of such child]

..
..
wrote in message
...
Wow...


http://www.dallasobserver.com/2008-0...ces-in-texas/1

"Justice Carolyn Wright ordered that the test results be sealed and kept
from the children. This was followed in March by the court's written opinion
that slapped Hanschen for ordering the testing in the first place and
ordered the DNA results destroyed."Not only did they reprimand the judge for
seeking the truth, but in addition they destroyed the evidence that exposes
the truth. ONLY in AmeriKa......

"... once unmarried men sign an Acknowledgement of Paternity..." The correct
name for this form is "Agreement to give you my money for 20 years", since
he can't acknowledge that which he does not know.

This judge proclaims "'Part of the Family Code is that the child's interest
overrides everything'". How is it that a child's interest trumps the
father's interest? Is the father lesser of a human being? I bet if the
person who wrote such code was faced with the dilemma of either their
interest or the child's, they would change their tune REAL quick!

On Apr 5, 8:31*am, "Chris" wrote:
--
[Any man that's good enough to support a child is good enough to have
custody of such child]

.
wrote in message

... Wow...

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2008-0...urt-judge-shed...

"Justice Carolyn Wright ordered that the test results be sealed and kept
from the children. This was followed in March by the court's written opinion
that slapped Hanschen for ordering the testing in the first place and
ordered the DNA results destroyed."Not only did they reprimand the judge for
seeking the truth, but in addition they destroyed the evidence that exposes
the truth. ONLY in AmeriKa......

"... once unmarried men sign an Acknowledgement of Paternity..." The correct
name for this form is "Agreement to give you my money for 20 years", since
he can't acknowledge that which he does not know.

This judge proclaims "'Part of the Family Code is that the child's interest
overrides everything'". How is it that a child's interest trumps the
father's interest? Is the father lesser of a human being? I bet if the
person who wrote such code was faced with the dilemma of either their
interest or the child's, they would change their tune REAL quick!

And here's the beauty of it all...someone must understand this, right?

1. If guy suspects wife is cheating and when child is born reuests a
DNA test immediately...
whether she is cheating or not, here's what will happen...
a) if the baby is indeed that of the father, the mother will tell
everyone "how the
father doubted it was his child" and basically called her a
s....t...
RESULT - she will more thank likely leave him, he will NOT
have
equal rights to the baby, he will be forced to pay child
support and
all his family and friends (not to mention the courts) will
harrass him
for doubting it was ever his child...
b) if the baby is not his, he can divorce her and the family and
friends
will STILL say, "well, you should've left her before she got
pregnant
if you knew she was cheating, therefore, you're a piece of
garbage
to leave a pregnant woman like that...obviously, you never
truly loved her...

So, MANY fathers whether they suspect or NOT, decide that they'd
rather take
a chance and stay around and not rock the boat, because they do not
want
to be put in situation (a) above...

2. if a guy suspects his wife is cheating, but the baby is born and
he decides
to make the relationship work "for the sake of the kids", and they
later divorce
a) if he asks then for a DNA test, and the child is his, the
mother will
forever tell her child what daddy did and go back to (a) in 1
above.
b) if he asks for a DNA test and the child is NOT his, well, then
the courts
and society will say, "too bad, pay anyway, you should've asked
before
and your time has run out..."

And then there are women out there who truly believe this is still a
"man's" world.

I'll make sure my son has a vasectomy when he's 12 so that he doesn't
get
some crazy woman pregnant before he's at least 30 and can decide what
to
do with his life...or well, maybe I should encourage he have a child
at 13, so
that by the time his "child support sentence" is over, he still has
time to
work and save for his retirement...hmmm...

--
[Any man that's good enough to support a child is good enough to have
custody of such child]

..
..
"whatamess" wrote in message
...
On Apr 5, 8:31 am, "Chris" wrote:
--
[Any man that's good enough to support a child is good enough to have
custody of such child]

.
wrote in message

...
Wow...

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2008-0...urt-judge-shed...

"Justice Carolyn Wright ordered that the test results be sealed and kept
from the children. This was followed in March by the court's written
opinion
that slapped Hanschen for ordering the testing in the first place and
ordered the DNA results destroyed."Not only did they reprimand the judge
for
seeking the truth, but in addition they destroyed the evidence that
exposes
the truth. ONLY in AmeriKa......

"... once unmarried men sign an Acknowledgement of Paternity..." The
correct
name for this form is "Agreement to give you my money for 20 years", since
he can't acknowledge that which he does not know.

This judge proclaims "'Part of the Family Code is that the child's
interest
overrides everything'". How is it that a child's interest trumps the
father's interest? Is the father lesser of a human being? I bet if the
person who wrote such code was faced with the dilemma of either their
interest or the child's, they would change their tune REAL quick!

And here's the beauty of it all...someone must understand this, right?

1. If guy suspects wife is cheating and when child is born reuests a
DNA test immediately...
whether she is cheating or not, here's what will happen...
a) if the baby is indeed that of the father, the mother will tell
everyone "how the
father doubted it was his child" and basically called her a
s....t...
RESULT - she will more thank likely leave him, he will NOT
have
equal rights to the baby, he will be forced to pay child
support and
all his family and friends (not to mention the courts) will
harrass him
for doubting it was ever his child...
b) if the baby is not his, he can divorce her and the family and
friends
will STILL say, "well, you should've left her before she got
pregnant
if you knew she was cheating, therefore, you're a piece of
garbage
to leave a pregnant woman like that...obviously, you never
truly loved her...

So, MANY fathers whether they suspect or NOT, decide that they'd
rather take
a chance and stay around and not rock the boat, because they do not
want
to be put in situation (a) above...

2. if a guy suspects his wife is cheating, but the baby is born and
he decides
to make the relationship work "for the sake of the kids", and they
later divorce
a) if he asks then for a DNA test, and the child is his, the
mother will
forever tell her child what daddy did and go back to (a) in 1
above.
b) if he asks for a DNA test and the child is NOT his, well, then
the courts
and society will say, "too bad, pay anyway, you should've asked
before
and your time has run out..."

And then there are women out there who truly believe this is still a
"man's" world.

I'll make sure my son has a vasectomy when he's 12 so that he doesn't
get
some crazy woman pregnant before he's at least 30 and can decide what
to
do with his life...or well, maybe I should encourage he have a child
at 13, so
that by the time his "child support sentence" is over, he still has
time to
work and save for his retirement...hmmm...

*************************

Which begs the question: If they father a child at that age, are they
immediately ordered to pay "child support"?

"Chris" wrote in message
...


[snip]


Which begs the question: If they father a child at that age, are they
immediately ordered to pay "child support"?

It's been done. I don't have the situation for the case, but I do recall
where a boy was sexually assaulted by an older female, she popped out a kid
from it and the boy she attacked was ordered to pay C$ for her raping him
some 9 months earlier - even though she was labeled a sexual predator, she
(I believe) got to keep custody the child.

Nice legal system we have, eh? Males are screwed no matter what.

If someone has the link, please post.

On Apr 6, 10:41*am, "Dusty" wrote:
"Chris" wrote in message

...



[snip]



Which begs the question: If they father a child at that age, are they
immediately ordered to pay "child support"?

It's been done. *I don't have the situation for the case, but I do recall
where a boy was sexually assaulted by an older female, she popped out a kid
from it and the boy she attacked was ordered to pay C$ for her raping him
some 9 months earlier - even though she was labeled a sexual predator, she
(I believe) got to keep custody the child.

Nice legal system we have, eh? *Males are screwed no matter what.

If someone has the link, please post.

Ah, this is funny...I go to the AG's page ALL THE TIME...it seems
that once this article came out, he decided to put ALL KINDS of info
for
non-custodial parents out there...even on that whole issue of not the
father...
he states in one of his stupid pamphlets that they ASK the mother to
give ALL
information of ALL possible fathers...yeah, right...idiot he is.

Anyway, there's not a single place ANYWHERE on HOW TO STOP child
support payments...

--
[Any man that's good enough to support a child is good enough to have
custody of such child]

..
..
"whatamess" wrote in message
...
On Apr 6, 10:41 am, "Dusty" wrote:
"Chris" wrote in message

...



[snip]



Which begs the question: If they father a child at that age, are they
immediately ordered to pay "child support"?

It's been done. I don't have the situation for the case, but I do recall
where a boy was sexually assaulted by an older female, she popped out a
kid
from it and the boy she attacked was ordered to pay C$ for her raping him
some 9 months earlier - even though she was labeled a sexual predator, she
(I believe) got to keep custody the child.

Nice legal system we have, eh? Males are screwed no matter what.

If someone has the link, please post.

Ah, this is funny...I go to the AG's page ALL THE TIME...it seems
that once this article came out, he decided to put ALL KINDS of info
for
non-custodial parents out there...even on that whole issue of not the
father...
he states in one of his stupid pamphlets that they ASK the mother to
give ALL
information of ALL possible fathers...yeah, right...idiot he is.

Anyway, there's not a single place ANYWHERE on HOW TO STOP child
support payments...

***************

That's because it's the one and only SACRED rip-off.