WomanSavers.com Forum / MEN'S AREA / Not the father. DOESN‘T MATTER. PAY UP!

http://www.ajc.com/news/court-knew-man-jailed-91036.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab&imw=Y

Court knew man jailed for a year for non-support was not child‘s father
By BILL RANKIN


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


Frank Hatley has languished in a South Georgia jail for more than a year.

The reason? He failed to reimburse the state for all the public assistance his “son” received over the past two decades.

The problem? Hatley is not the biological father -- and a special assistant state attorney general and a judge knew it but jailed Hatley anyway.

“I feel bad for the man,” Cook County Sheriff Johnny Daughtrey said Tuesday. “Put yourself in that man’s shoes: If it wasn’t your child, would you want to be paying child support for him?”

Daughtrey said he hopes a hearing Wednesday will resolve the matter. Hatley has been held at the county jail in Adel since June 25, 2008, costing the county an estimated $35 to $40 a day.

Even after learning he was not the father, Hatley paid thousands of dollars the state said he owed for support. After losing his job and becoming homeless, he still made payments out of his unemployment benefits.

Hatley’s lawyer, Sarah Geraghty of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, said two independent DNA tests -- one nine years ago and one just a few days ago -- prove he is not the biological father.

“This is a case of excessive zeal to recover money trumping common sense,” she said. “What possible legitimate reason can the state have to pursue Mr. Hatley for child support when he does not have any children?”

It may be difficult for Hatley to get out from under the court order, said Atlanta family lawyer Randall Kessler, who is not associated with the case. “It’s definitely unfair,” Kessler said. “But at the same time, he’s dealing with a valid court order.”

Russ Willard, a spokesman for the state attorney general, said if Hatley can show at the hearing that he is indigent, the state will not oppose his release.

Willard said Hatley could have applied to the state Office of Child Support Services to request that he be relieved of his obligations. He said Hatley has not made such a request.

According to court filings, Hatley was never told that he could have a court-appointed lawyer if he could not afford one. Geraghty said she only recently took on Hatley as a client after the sheriff asked her to talk to Hatley about his predicament.

Geraghty said Hatley had paid a total of $9,524.05 in support since April 1995, but records of payments before that time are not available.

In the 1980s, Hatley had a relationship with Essie Lee Morrison, who became pregnant, had a baby boy and told Hatley the child was his, according to court records. The couple never married and split up shortly after Travon was born in 1987.

In 1989, Morrison applied for public assistance through the state Department of Human Resources. The state then moved to get Hatley to reimburse the cost of Travon’s support, and Hatley agreed because he believed Travon was his son.

But in 2000, DNA samples from Hatley and Travon showed the two were not related, according to a court records.

With the help of a Georgia Legal Services lawyer, Hatley went to court and was relieved of his responsibility to pay future child support. But he still had to deal with being a deadbeat dad when it was assumed that he was really the dad.

Homerville lawyer Charles Reddick, working as a special assistant state attorney general, prepared an order requiring Hatley to pay the $16,398 he still owed the state for child support.

The Aug. 21, 2001 order, signed by Cook County Superior Court Judge Dane Perkins, acknowledges that Hatley was not Travon’s father.

After that, Hatley paid almost $6,000. But last year he was laid off from his job unloading charcoal grills from shipping containers. He became homeless and lived in his car. Still, Hatley made some child support payments using his unemployment benefits.

By May 2008, he apparently had not paid enough. In another order prepared by Reddick and signed by Perkins, Hatley was found in contempt and jailed. When he is released, the order said, Hatley must continue making payments to the state at a rate of $250 a month.

I‘m a feminist....I think this is a disgraceful miscarriage of justice.

Thanfully incidents like this are rare, thats why they make the news.

If we were to fill news bulletins with all the incidents of men skipping out on child-support for their children we‘d have no room for any other news.

Its a shame.

"Add:  In case someone decides to accuse me of misogyny in this thread, I‘m not"

If you are being acused of misoginy, probably you just have been saying the truth and being honest more often than certain people would like.

Not only the laws...

I was watching the michael jackson tribute, and there were some dudes holding signs with "God hates fags", "michael jackson go to hell", and things like that. Only in the USA you see this kind of thing, what a lack of respect. This is the kind of thing you would expect from a muslim country or something, not a wastern country

Tom Leykis with the deceptive Andrea 1/2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zadD2eu4hmo

Tom Leykis with the deceptive Andrea 2/2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbaaGQxGjPU


And women wonder why more men are getting pissed off and accusing them of double standards. I mean, really!

Extremely odd situations are not the reason some males hate women.
After all don‘t we expect that women will judge men as they are not based on how rotten males (i.e. not men) are?

For those two years he thought the child was his, he had a duty to pay, but since the facts showed he was not the father, then it was the moral thing to do, to erase his arrears.

It‘s ridiculous to have the woman who did not know who the father was, to pay back. So many men don‘t know they have children and they are not expected to pay back when they did not know they impregnated someone. But they knew they had sex. So to punish the woman is to make a separate law for women not knowing who the father is, when males could impregnate many women without consequence(which is the case). Only from the time they are advised of the pregnancy must they pay, unless they believe the child is theirs, obviously.

I don‘t know about the U.S., but in Canada, fortunately people are advised of the right to apply for free or subsidized legal help, plus some quick free advice is often available.

In addition, it‘s hard to understand why the guy‘s lawyer and the judge did not simply state to him what he needed to do to change the order for past support.... that is a question. He may have been told.

We don‘t know, because sometimes, well, in fact, often the media does not do the research and just reports easy themes. It may be the guy felt really depressed, got good advice, but just could not manage to fill out the forms. I would say in that situation I would expect the person prosecuting him, i.e. going after the funds .... to use the discretion to not to seek a jail term.

Since he appears to have been unrepresented in that case, why not have the prosecutor/attorney seeking the funds ask the judge to order him present, then talk to him, hand him the form, while at court and say, "Sir please provide this information now, go to the clerk, have it sworn and hand it to me." Then voila! everybody gets what they need. This is the ethical thing to do.

It appears someone thought they had to "follow the rules" like a robot, rather than like a human being, rather than for the purpose the rules were created, i.e. to hold the correct people accountable. Sick!

It is morally lazy, compassionless, heartless and unconscionable to behave this way if they knew the facts. Shame. Disgusting.

"It‘s ridiculous to have the woman who did not know who the father was, to pay back. So many men don‘t know they have children and they are not expected to pay back when they did not know they impregnated someone. But they knew they had sex. So to punish the woman is to make a separate law for women not knowing who the father is, when males could impregnate many women without consequence(which is the case). Only from the time they are advised of the pregnancy must they pay, unless they believe the child is theirs, obviously."

This is not an apples with apples comparison. Regarding tat cheating woman on vacation, she and her cuckolded husband were married. In a situation like that, if you find out you were victimized, you deserve your money back. If you say no, you are saying that men desreve to be victimized and they have to suck it up. Now YOU are making two sets of laws. One for men. One for women.

When men **** a lot of women now and impregnate them it‘s not within the sanctity of marriage. If men don‘t know they have kids, how can this be? Probably because the chick lied and said she was on the pill or poked holes in the condom. Or, because she‘s a whore and passing the kid off as some other guy‘s. I have listened to Leykis and it happens a lot. Therefore if women want men to pay for kids and don‘t want to have to go through legal hassles to get deadbeat dads to pay, they would do well to stop engaging in sneaky behavior and also pick better more reliable, stable, family oriented guys to ****.

The fact that you permit for any cuckolded man to get stuck with a bill for a kid that‘s not his shows how much you hate men. But if you have met some piece of crap men before, then it‘s kind of understandable from where I am. But that doesn‘t justify structuring the laws that will only harm the nice guys since the bad guys who don‘t give a damn could be stopped from impregnating women and running if women were more intelligent and careful who they let have sex with them without protection or bang them with protection that they were pretending they were on or would be foolproof just because they want a kid to raise without a man anyway. Bad guys will be bad guys and laws needed to reel them in can‘t be used against nice guys who get cuckolded and deserve to have money given back once they find they were victims of paternity fraud. For you to imply this needs to be, shows a problem with you and shows you are an unfair person.

But as the evidence shows, some women marry these nice guys, but get impregnanted by someone else. The only reason this woman was nice enough about admitting what she had done is because that baby was going to come out golden brown instead of white. She didn‘t keep silent like these women.

http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/family-parenting/articlemh.aspx?cp-documentid=8416062

If people want to pretend to be concerned about the effects on the kids (so concerned that places like Australia are considering passing legislation that require FEMALE consent to get a paternity test), they will tell women to stop being whores and they will change the laws to protect the good men who could otherwise contritube to society by being good father. But feminists who hate and want to punish all men are driving the good ones who otherwise would participate away. And then women complain that less and less men are stepping up to the plate where they have a good chance of being legally raped. They wouldn‘t complain if they had empathy and could judge their actions properly.

Obviously, that‘s asking a lot of most modern women.

"It‘s ridiculous to have the woman who did not know who the father was, to pay back. "

What is ridiculous is saying such thing. The woman knows who she sleeps with. If she didn‘t know who the father was is her problem, that would not happen if she sleeps with only one man. Every penny should be paid back.

"So many men don‘t know they have children and they are not expected to pay back when they did not know they impregnated someone"

Are you comparing puting a man to pay child support for a child not his to a woman hiding paternity from a certain man ? THAT is ridiculous. Don‘t drink before posting.

This has less to do with men/women issues.  Its more about our goverment and all its lovely loopholes.

I was legally adopted,shortly after birth.  Apparently,my birth father died.  My mother thought it a grand idea to apply for SS benefits.  She recieved them.  Only many years later the goverment came after ME to recover the illegal benefits.

Point being...the man in question shouldnt have had to pay child support anymore than I should have had to pay for my raising.  The goverment dosent give a damn "who" pays it...they just want their money.

Point being...the man in question shouldnt have had to pay child support anymore than I should have had to pay for my raising.  The goverment dosent give a damn "who" pays it...they just want their money.

The money the guy is going to pay for child support is not going to the government. Its going for the mother to spend in whatever way she wants.

Oh for Christ‘s sake, how thick can the plot thicken???

The hell it isnt!  LOL

In 1989, Morrison applied for public assistance through the state Department of Human Resources. The state then moved to get Hatley to reimburse the cost of Travon’s support, and Hatley agreed because he believed Travon was his son.