Total Divorce Blog

The Divorce Blog has detailed the “Duped Dads” issue in the past, and a Texas state legislator is trying to protect those fathers who learn after divorce via DNA tests that they are not the biological parent of a child. State Representative Harold Dutton has introduced House Bill 774, which would add DNA tests to Texas child support cases. Current Texas law presumes that a child born during a marriage is a child of the marriage.

Specifically, this Texas legislation would not allow a court to make a father pay child support in an amount of greater than $100 on several conditions:

• if he learns through genetic testing that he is not the biological father of the child;

• if the mother knew he was not the father, and yet signed an acknowledgement of his paternity and initiated a proceeding for child support from him.

Dutton called these instances in which men believe that they are the fathers and thus pay child support payments for years before learning that they are not the biological parent a “huge problem” in a KHOU.com story. The story also detailed the case of Morgan Wise, who learned long after his divorce that two of his four children were not biologically his. Wise was quoted in the story as calling this discovery “the worst day of his life.”

While Dutton’s child support legislation has drawn some support, it has also raised concerns. Attorney Rick Flowers said that while he understands such anger, he feels there is a time to challenge paternity. According to Flowers, that time is before the divorce case. He added that these “Duped Dads” cases are very rare and estimated that he only sees them 1 out of every 300 clients. We’ll keep you updated on the latest developments with this Texas child support legislation.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 9:54 am and is filed under Child Support Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.