“It’s not politically correct to say that child-support laws are biased against men. But cases of questionable fatherhood and bizarre prosecutions of disproved dads show that sometimes it’s true.”
Who’s Your Daddy?
It’s not politically correct to say that child-support laws are biased against men. But cases of questionable fatherhood and bizarre prosecutions of disproved dads show that sometimes it’s true
By Cecily Ruttenberg
Forty-year-old John Jones of Redwood City logs on to MySpace.com, a website he visits regularly. Each visit, Jones navigates to the same spot, the photograph of a sandy-haired 11-year-old boy named Ethan. Ethan is Jones’ son–maybe. The father and son have never met or even spoken on the phone. Ethan’s picture on MySpace.com is their only connection–their only connection, that is, other than the child-support payments for Ethan that have been automatically deducted from Jones’ paychecks for the past nine years.
Financial responsibility began when Ethan’s mother named Jones–whose name has been altered here at his request–as the boy’s father on welfare paperwork. The 1996 Welfare Reform Act requires women to name their child’s father in order to receive public assistance, a law designed to recoup government welfare costs by garnishing the wages of “deadbeat dads.”
Under former California law, Jones had six months from the time he learned about Ethan to contest paternity. (That timeline has since been extended to two years.) Unaware of the deadline and unable to afford an attorney, Jones missed his chance. To this day, Jones does not have any proof that he is Ethan’s father. His only hope to find out lies with a little known piece of legislation set to expire in five months.
fugitivenation 
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