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| -Lurid Crime Tales- | ||
| Childless man released from child support debt | ||
| 2009-08-12 | ||
| (CNN) -- A Georgia man who spent a year in jail for nonpayment of child support -- despite the fact he has no children -- has been cleared of the debt, his attorney said Tuesday. Frank Hatley, 50, spent 13 months in jail for being a deadbeat dad before his release last month. A judge ordered him jailed in June 2008 for failing to support his "son" -- a child who DNA tests proved was not fathered by Hatley. That makes sense. Not a lot of sense, but sense. Of a kind... Last week, Cook County Superior Court Judge Dane Perkins signed an order stating, "defendant is no longer responsible for paying any amount of child support." The order permits the state's Office of Child Support Services to close its file on Hatley. "We're satisfied with the result for Mr. Hatley, but still troubled by the state's monumental lapse of judgment in this case," attorney Sarah Geraghty with the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights told CNN in a written statement. Hatley did not immediately return a call from CNN Tuesday.
For 13 years, Hatley made payments to the state until learning in 2000 that the boy might not be his. A DNA test that year confirmed the child was not fathered by Hatley, court documents said. He returned to court and was relieved of any future child support payments, but was ordered to pay more than $16,000 he owed the state before the ruling. Since 2000, Hatley paid that debt down to about $10,000, Geraghty said. Court documents showed he was jailed for six months in 2006 for falling behind on payments during a period of unemployment, but afterward he resumed making payments, continuing to do so even after he lost another job and became homeless in 2008. But last year he became unable to make the payments and was jailed. The argument for keeping Hatley liable for the back payments, according to the attorney who represented him in 2000, was that he signed a consent agreement with the Office of Child Support Services. Draco, sitting comfy in the afterlife, must be so proud... The court agreed that Hatley had to comply with the consent agreement for the period he believed the child was his son, said attorney Latesha Bradley.
Hatley was released from jail last month after Perkins ruled he was indigent and should not be jailed for failing to make the payments. The Georgia Department of Human Services, which includes the Office of Child Support Services, plans to propose legislation in the next session of the state Legislature that would prevent similar situations in the future, said agency spokeswoman Dena Smith. Two things still remain to be cleared up for Hatley, Geraghty said -- lifting the child-support holds on his driver's license and his income tax. It remains unclear whether he will be reimbursed for the $6,000 in payments he made since 2000, she said -- so far, he has not been. | ||
| Posted by:Fred |
| #11 Yes, I have also hear it said we are entitled to justice but weather or not it's fair is another issue. |
| Posted by: Dale 2009-08-12 20:45 |
| #10 Agreed on all points, P2K. |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-08-12 20:13 |
| #9 Actually, in American business law, if you give someone a substantial gift, repeatedly, and establish a dependency with that gift, the courts may decide that you must continue giving that gift. O rly? Ima recall the strange case of Santa Claus vs. Kids Inc. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2009-08-12 20:09 |
| #8 "The Law as a rule, has not much to do with Justice..." |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-08-12 11:39 |
| #7 And how many of the women have been prosecuted for filing false official statements/documents? What part of 'thou shall not bear false witness' don't they grasp. This undermines everything the women worked for in the 20th Century in obtaining equality before the law when 'exemptions' are granted which clearly destroys the principles of justices and fairness. It makes the whole effort nothing more than a play for power and privilege. It's not a game where one picks and chooses what gets applied to everyone and what is not. That the state plays along with this injustice for convenience in collecting resources only chips away further the legitimacy of the state's authority. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-08-12 09:04 |
| #6 A clearer example of government abuse could not be found. I am not ligtigious, but I hope he sues and get a huge settlement. Whomever was in charge of this case should be demoted to gutter cleaner (you can't fire civil servants). |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2009-08-12 08:49 |
| #5 "Men being forced to support the children not their own Fixed it for ya - it's called the welfare state. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2009-08-12 06:38 |
| #4 Men being forced to support the children not their own but who are the children of women with whom the men have had relationships but to whom they were never married isn't a particularly uncommon thing. Courts view the support of children as a social good and often look for any opening to land a financial hook into any convenient party who is able to pay. A few "standards" that I've seen used: any cohabitation, acceptance of responsibility for the child by the man (as in the instant case), recognition by the child of the man as the father, and even in one case money given to an ex-girlfriend on a couple of occasions allegedly to support her (but not his) child after the pair had split. Once the payor is hooked by the system all of the normal rules apply and courts will almost never release a payor from this sort of obligation merely because it is later discovered that the child is not his. Note that here Hatley was released from jail because he was found to be indigent and unable to pay, *not* because the court determined that he was not responsible for making the court-mandated child support payments. I'm skeptical that any event other than the child reaching maturity will release him from his obligation to pay, such would be the norm with this sort of thing. As egregious as Hatley being jailed is the way state social service attorneys go after men in these instances. Often as not it's essentially a railroading of someone who can't afford or doesn't want to waste money on an attorney to combat the legions of taxpayer-funded attorneys who represent women & children and as a result is an easy mark to be tagged with support payments because he just doesn't understand that in many cases it makes little difference to the courts whether the child in question is his or not. |
| Posted by: AzCat 2009-08-12 02:28 |
| #3 Wait till somebody gets jailed for not filling every form out just perfectly with our comming 1000 page Healthcare System. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2009-08-12 01:16 |
| #2 Actually, in American business law, if you give someone a substantial gift, repeatedly, and establish a dependency with that gift, the courts may decide that you must continue giving that gift. This is frequently found in cases where a man is paying child support and discovers the child is not his. The courts use the logic that a parent-child relationship existed, even if it was not true. So child support must be continued. But in this case, the twist was that he was jailed, even though he had no ability to pay. And that is a very different kettle of fish, hearkening back to debtors' prisons. It is also illogical, because they cannot earn money their way out of jail. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-08-12 00:36 |
| #1 ...Okay...I see what the problem was here: It wasn't that he wasn't the father, but that the state told him he owed it money and he hadn't paid. Debt to the state trumps all. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2009-08-12 00:21 |