This hapens in every state (most publicly Amber Frey had been collecting money from a man who was not the father of her first child for years)

If a woman claims a man is the father of her child, wheels are sent into motion to collect money from him, even if he never met her. A paternity test only happens after a man insists on it. Sometimes he doesn't know he has been named as the father. Men in the military who are away have their wages garnished without notice to them. They also have little recourse to get back money paid in the past for child that wasn't theirs. A man in NC with a name similar to a man named as the father in a California suit had his wages garnished. He had never been to CA and had his own family and couldn't afford to hire a lawyer and travel to California to prove his innocence.

It is quite a scam, really. We live in a land of misandrist laws based on the alleged (mopstly imaginary) wrongs done to women by men in the past.

I keep getting e-mails from various deposed Nigerians offering to send me child support.  I'm wary.

I agree this is asinine, but was it entirely necessary to take a swipe at the entire state for this? To trot out Jethro yet again? No, it wasn't, it was just easy. Stop being so simple or if you can't do that maybe try and be funny.  

The article says Parker was the "acknowledged father."  According to http://arkansas.statelawyers.com/Practice/Practice_Detail.cfm/PracticeTypeID:75 "An acknowledged father is any biological father of a child born to unmarried parents for whom paternity has been established by either the admission of the father or the agreement of the parents. An acknowledged father must pay child support."  If the court held that he was the acknowledged father, then, by the definition, he had agreed earlier that he was.  At that point, he was liable for support.  Some states allow for the forgiveness of unpaid support obligations if paternity is disproved.  Arkansas doesn't.  Should that change?  Probably.  Supposedly, legislation to that effect is being considered.  That legislation could be written to cover Parker and others in his predicament.  As an "objective journalist," you could have done a little more research, maybe?  To paraphrase a quote attributed to Marcus Aurelius, "The opinion of 10,000 objective journalists is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."

Jah

Jah - so apparently the court declared Parker to be the acknowledged father without first establishing that he was within the context of that law; "biological" being the key word here. And per my being an "objective journalist", I'll offer up Roland Barthes: "What I claim is to live is the full contradiction of my times, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth."

Jason,

I retract my snarky Marcus Aurelius quote.  Totally out of line on my part.

There are several travesties of justice here.  The first is the law that the AK court correctly interpreted.  It stated that only future obligations could be forgiven if paternity was disproved.  The AK legislature was negligent and wrong.  But, the court was right.  Cries of activist judges aside, the court's job is to interpret the law as written.  They did just that.  Law and justice are (too) often different things.

Another travesty is Parker's actions.  To be an "acknowledged father" under the AK definition, Parker had to state that he was (or believed he was) the "biological" father.  I'm conjecturing here, but his second thoughts arose when he was served with a support order.  He could/should have asked for the test then.

From what I've seen and read, the "office of fatherhood" is interpreted pretty broadly by many states.  Living together at the birth of the child, providing shelter, food, or clothing can constitute being the "father" under the laws of many states.  The intent is to protect that child.  I suppose things are that way in part because it can be pretty simple for a man to skate on his responsibilities and avoid paying support.  That's too bad: for the child, the mother, and the public stuck with the bill.

Jah

Unlike Arkansas, which recently required a non-father to pay child support , legislators in Colorado are drawing the line with a proposed bill that exempts non-fathers from paying child support for other guys' kids. The intricacies of child support awards