In 1986, Essie Lee Morrison of Georgia had a child.  She told her boyfriend, Frank Hatley, now 50 years old, that the child was his.  The two never married and broke up shortly afterwards.

Morrison applied for public support for the child when the child was two years old.   Georgia then collected child support payments from Hatley for the next thirteen years.

In 2000, Hatley learned that the child might not be his. A DNA test confirmed it.  The Court released him from any future child support.  But he signed an agreement with the Office of Child Support Services to pay over $16,000 in past due child support.

Hatley continued to pay that debt down to about $10,000, but fell behind in 2006 when he lost his job.  He was jailed for six months.  He resumed paying.  Then he became unemployed again and lost his home.  The court put him back in jail in June of 2008.

Finally, the court released him from jail last month finding that he was indigent and should not be jailed for failing to make the child support payments.  The debt has been canceled but the State has yet to release his driver’s license and income tax refunds.

More on this story at CNN.com

Pasqualino Cornelio of Toronto, Canada, married Anciolina Cornelio and they had twins.  They separated in 1998 and Pasqualino began making child support payments.

Recently, Anciolina sought to reduce his time with the twins and increase his child support.  Pasqualino retaliated by have a DNA test.  Guess what.  He was not the biological father of the twins.

Pasqualino claimed he was the victim of misrepresentation and fraud.  He demanded termination of child support and reimbursement of the tens of thousands of dollars he has paid over the years.

But there was no other father to step in and take his place.  “Ms. Cornelio denies knowledge of who the twins’ biological father might be,” the Judge said. “In fact, she claims to have no memory of an extramarital affair preceding their birth, which she attributes to the medication she was taking at the time.”

So, the court decided that because Pasqualino “was the only father the twins knew during the course of the marriage,” he could neither stop paying child support nor recover past child support.

“While the failure of Ms. Cornelio to disclose to her husband the fact that she had an extramarital affair and that the twins might not be his biological children may well have been a moral wrong against Mr. Cornelio, it is a wrong that does not afford him a legal remedy to recover child support he has already paid, and that does not permit him to stop paying child support,” wrote Judge Katherine van Rensburg on Dec. 22, 2008.

Source:  National Post