Non-fathers forced to pay paternity support - your opinion?

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!


While surfing around on BBC Web, I stumbled upon this (admittedly old) case. What do you think about the topic?

The poll option does not allow for a complete question, so I will have to post it here:

Poll Question: Should a man, once DNA proves that he is not the father of children that he was legally recognized as father to, be forced to pay paternity money for those children?

Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

Imagine raising a family for years, only to find out one day that your children are not really yours.

Imagine, after the divorce, being told by the courts that you have to continue paying financial support for these children.

Is this a Kafkaesque nightmare, or an unfortunate necessity to protect the children’s interests?

No one knows exactly how many men -- and children -- around the United States are confronting this question in their own lives, but the individual cases that have made it into the spotlight are wrenching.

One such story, told recently on NBC’s Dateline, is that of Morgan Wise, an engineer in Big Springs, Texas. Wise’s fateful discovery, several years after his divorce, was prompted by the desire to help treat his 6-year-old son for cystic fibrosis: When he took a blood test to find out which cystic fibrosis gene he carried, it turned out that he didn’t have the gene at all. Both parents have to be carriers for a child to inherit the gene.

Subsequent genetic tests showed that of the four children born to Wise’s former wife during their 13-year marriage, only the eldest was his. "I never experienced a heart attack, and I can tell you, I had one that day," Wise told Dateline. "I mean...a part of me died."

When Wise went to court asking to be relieved of the child support payments that consumed a third of his take-home pay, he was turned down. Wise was later barred from contact with all four children because he had discussed the issue of their parentage with them in violation of the judge’s order, but he still had to keep the checks coming. In January the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Wise’s appeal.

To some extent, Wise and others in his position are victims of a gap between law and technology. The law basically presumes, as in ancient Rome, that a woman’s husband is the father of any child born during the marriage. While a court may rule in favor of the cuckolded husband, what legal precedent exists is not on his side. Rulings in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and California have also held that if the husband acknowledged the children as his for the duration of the marriage, he cannot deny paternity afterward.

When it comes to unmarried fathers, the law is more flexible, but a man who did not initially dispute a paternity claim may also find it tough to do anything about it later, particularly if he at some point acted as a father to the child. In Georgia, Carnell Smith, now 41, voluntarily assumed responsibility for a child his former girlfriend told him was his, paying more than $40,000 in child support during an 11-year period. In 1999, when the mother went to court to seek more money, Smith, by then married with two children, sought genetic testing and learned that he wasn’t the girl’s father. The courts were not swayed, and by now Smith’s total child support bill has reached $120,000.

The 1996 federal welfare reform law directs that voluntary acknowledgment of paternity by an unwed father should be treated as a conclusive and binding establishment of paternity, although it allows for a 60-day rescission period; a 2000 Department of Health and Human Services report on paternity establishment strongly urged state child support collection agencies to follow these guidelines and to encourage the courts to do so as well. Interestingly, the report also noted that over 40 percent of local child support agency staffers surveyed supported genetic testing for putative fathers. Many of these employees felt that affidavits acknowledging paternity were often signed in the flush of excitement over the birth of a child, and some even expressed concerns that a mother’s new boyfriend might acknowledge paternity knowing that he was not the father, "out of kindness, pity or foolishness."

At present, four states -- Louisiana, Colorado, Iowa, and Ohio -- allow men to use DNA tests to disprove previously acknowledged paternity. Similar "paternity fraud" legislation is pending in California and in Georgia, where the initiative has been spearheaded by none other than Carnell Smith.

It might seem like a matter of simple justice. Why should a man support a child who isn’t his? If DNA testing can be used to exonerate people accused of rape or murder, why not use it to exonerate men accused of fathering children?

Nevertheless, such proposals remain controversial. Earlier this year, an editorial in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that the Georgia bill dealing with DNA and paternity was "moving forward at an alarming pace" and warned, "Somebody in the General Assembly needs to apply the brakes to it quickly."

What exactly is the peril opponents of such legislation are trying to avert? One common response is that one has to consider the best interest of the children. Yet the exoneration of a falsely accused "father" does not mean that no child support will be paid; the real "culprit" can be pursued instead. Morgan Wise, for instance, has unsuccessfully tried to argue that his former wife’s lover or lovers who fathered the three boys he once believed to be his should be the person or persons paying child support.

Moreover, paternity fraud often ends up robbing its victims’ real children. Bert Riddick, a California father of three, has spent the last 11 years paying child support for a girl he has never met, a girl whom DNA tests have shown to be someone else’s daughter. As a result, he and his family have had to move in with his brother-in-law, in whose house the three children are crammed into one room. His wife has had to go on welfare.

Critics of paternity fraud legislation also emphasize the social, emotional, and psychological damage children are likely to suffer when Daddy suddenly discards them. And there is no doubt that children get badly hurt. Morgan Wise may have been shafted by the system, but it’s difficult to view him with unalloyed sympathy when one learns that, after losing his claim for relief from child support payments, he took his battle public -- with the inevitable result that the rumors reached the boys’ school, and he ended up telling them he wasn’t their real father.

"Regardless of the circumstances of conception, for the child this is the only father he or she has known," Los Angeles attorney Jenny Skoble, director of the Child Support Project at the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law, wrote recently in Insight magazine. "If this man disappears from the child’s life, the child not only loses his financial support, but suffers the well-known emotional effects of being abandoned by a parent."

That’s often true, and it’s unfortunate (though it is worth noting that the women’s advocates typically making these arguments rarely show much concern about divorced fathers’ complaints that their ex-wives intentionally disrupt visitation). Yet the reality is that no court can force a parent to be emotionally involved with his children and to participate actively in raising them. A court can only force him to pay up. It’s true that courts sometimes bar the alleged father not only from using DNA test results in a paternity challenge but from having the children tested, so as to avoid potentially traumatizing them. Even so, a father who is unsure of his paternity may well withdraw from the children.

It is sad, of course, when a man who has been a de facto father to a child for years suddenly and abruptly abandons him or her. (Conversely, there is something self-serving and opportunistic about the position of some fathers’ advocates that a man who has learned that his child is not biologically his should be able to continue contact and visitation but shouldn’t pay child support.) But surely a good portion of the blame for such tragic situations rests with mothers who cheat and lie. The men who fight back don’t necessarily believe, as some critics claim, that biology alone makes you a father; often, they are reacting to being deceived and used.

"What you’re saying is that all a man is, in terms of a father to a child, is a sperm donor," Paula Roberts of the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington, D.C., told the Los Angeles Times. "We think that’s really bad social policy." Agreed. But our current social policy all too often reduces a man to a cash machine.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!


I was a bit fast and sloppy when I did the poll options. The 6th and last poll option should read:

I am female. I am undecided on the topic.

Could the moderator first reading this do an edit?


Grateful in advance,

Peter Gustafsson

[TrainingDummy]

I picked the first option. I am very pro-women's rights, but I take exception to the last quote:

"What you’re saying is that all a man is, in terms of a father to a child, is a sperm donor."

Isn't that the position feminists tend to take when they argue that wives should not have to notify their husbands of an abortion? That though he may share genetic interest in the child, it is ultimately the woman's child and (while she is pregnant) body? To me, that is a right every woman should have. This is a very complicated subject (in the article), especially with the visitation issue. It's really a shame that the child has to deal with this sort of thing, but solely blaming the "father" for the emotional damage to the child when he was deceived by the mother is ridiculous and wrong. I picked the first answer because I think it's the best choice of the ones presented, but I know it is far from perfect and I am repulsed by the whole issue in general. The lack of regard people show for each other can be very disgusting in general.

[JasminaJ]

This is a tabloid-style story-unless the man involved willingly decided to raise the child-adopted-he shouldn't be required to be the child's father, financially or otherwise. Where's the sperm donor? What happened to birth control?
I totally concur with TD. It's sickening.
M. Gustafsson, aren't the Scandanavian countries structured as socialist?
That would make the paternity unimportant, as the child would be able to have free medical care. Some people with cystic fibrosis live into their middle twenties. My heart goes out to the slutty mom, she has a long hard road ahead. CF also has the genetic factor. Hope she uses Birth Control, so more children don't have to be born to suffer.

[lochinvar]

So, let me get this straight--he loved them and wanted to help them up until he found out they weren't his, at which point he then stopped loving them and stopped wanting to help them? Some "father"!

Sounds to me like he just wants to punish his ex- for her previous infidelity.

[JasminaJ]

Yes Lochinvar. Neither of them looks to be a great prize. But the kid has to be cared for. None of us get the parents we deserve.

[ReverseLunge]

He needs to sue that woman and get everything back and some extra.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!


Oh, where do I start...

Originally Posted by JasminaJ

This is a tabloid-style story-unless the man involved willingly decided to raise the child-adopted-he shouldn't be required to be the child's father, financially or otherwise. Where's the sperm donor? What happened to birth control?

There was no adoption. The last three children involved were born in wedlock, but the husband of the mother was not the biological father. There was no sperm donor, there was a cheating wife and her affair. There was no free will by the husband, he was duped. One could have hoped that she would have used birth control while cheating, but she did not even show that shred of decency.

Originally Posted by JasminaJ

M. Gustafsson, aren't the Scandanavian countries structured as socialist?

Presently, two out of four (Norway and Sweden) Scandinavian countries have labor/socialist prime ministers, while the other two (Iceland and Denmark) have non-socialist PM´s. The cited case happened in Texas. Your statement is both incorrect and irrelevant.

Originally Posted by JasminaJ

That would make the paternity unimportant, as the child would be able to have free medical care.

In Sweden at least - and I am almost sure that it goes for the other 3 countries also - medical care, while subsidized, is not free, and paternity money has to be payed anyways.

Originally Posted by JasminaJ

My heart goes out to the slutty mom, she has a long hard road ahead.

Exactly why should any heart go out for her??? She is (together with her then-affair) the malefactor of the whole sordid story! Her children and ex-husband are victims, and have done nothing wrong!

She really gets my blood boiling.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

A NYTimes article on the topic, part 1:

Originally Posted by Tamar Lewin

In Genetic Testing for Paternity, Law Often Lags Behind Science

New York Times, Feb 3, 01

By TAMAR LEWIN

BIG SPRING, Tex. It should have been good news when Morgan Wise's doctor told him that genetic testing showed he was not a carrier of cystic fibrosis, the disease his youngest child, Rauli, has struggled with since birth.

But instead, the 1999 test results led to the complete unraveling
of Mr. Wise's relationship with Rauli and his three other children.

"For a child to have cystic fibrosis, both parents have to be carriers," Mr. Wise said. "When I got the results, my first thought
was maybe we'd misdiagnosed Rauli. But the doctor came around from his desk and said, `I'm just going to come straight out with it: Is there any reason to think this boy may not be yours?' He advised me to have DNA paternity testing. I was in such shock I couldn't even drive home."

The paternity tests showed that Mr. Wise had not fathered Rauli or his two other sons, Marti and Rowdi. Of the four children born
during his marriage to Wanda Fryar, which ended in 1996, only the eldest, daughter Carli, was biologically his.

But the court that had handled his divorce would not consider the genetic evidence and refused to allow him to stop paying child
support for the boys. The court also cut off his visitation rights, even with his biological daughter.

For centuries, courts have presumed that all children born within marriage are fathered by the husband. Because courts could not prove paternity, the thinking went, excluding any evidence of infidelity was the best way to protect children from the stigma of illegitimacy, men from the shame of cuckoldry - and society from marital disruption.

These days, though, genetic testing has made determining paternity simple, even routine. According to the American Association of Blood Banks, 280,000 paternity tests were conducted in 1999, three times as many as a decade earlier. And in 28 percent of the tests, the man tested was found not to be the father.

But in most states, the law has not caught up with the science. And in dozens of cases around the country, divorced men like Mr.
Wise - and single men who have previously acknowledged paternity - are having their genetic evidence of non paternity rejected by the courts. They are also being ordered to continue supporting children they did not father.

Many lawyers say the old policy still makes sense, because once paternity has been assigned, either as part of a divorce order or
in a separate paternity proceeding, courts should not revisit the question. Furthermore, they say, there is something unseemly about
men trying to get out of supporting children who have loved and depended on them.

But lawyers representing the deceived men see it differently: the unseemly thing, they say, is forcing a man like Mr. Wise to assume
financial responsibility for children he was duped into believing were his own, children another man should be supporting.

"Morgan Wise is the victim here, he's not the one who did wrong, but he's the one being punished," said Mr. Wise's lawyer, Robert
Miller, who argued his case last month to the state appeals court in Eastland, Tex.

Phyllis Royal, the lawyer for Ms. Fryar, said neither she nor her client would discuss the case.

While Mr. Wise's case made headlines in Texas, there are similar cases scattered throughout the country each year, many of them resolved in the privacy of family court, or, if appealed, reported only under the parents' initials.

"Now that DNA testing has washed off the table the reasons we didn't use to allow paternity evidence, we have to decide whether there are other reasons to keep that evidence out, like child support and fairness," said Carol Sanger, a family law professor at
Columbia Law School.

"We no longer run the risk of a gazillion people coming forward to say `Howard Hughes is my father' because we can say, `Stick out your finger and we'll see,' " Ms. Sanger said. "But there are real concerns about letting biology trump all. The state may want to make sure that if they take one dad off the hook, they will have another one paying. The underlying question is, what establishes a parental relationship?"

The issue is complicated, she said: Any policy that emphasizes biological ties could upset the nascent recognition of nontraditional families, such as same-sex partnerships. And children may suffer from the disruption of their ties to a father figure.

But other experts say any legal policy that will not acknowledge scientific truth is disturbing, especially at a time when criminal
courts are allowing people to use DNA evidence to prove their innocence, no matter how long after a crime.

"It's a real question: if we let DNA do its work in the criminal justice system, why not in the family court system?" Ms. Sanger
said. "The answer is that the concerns are different. We never want an innocent person in jail. But to put it in the most melodramatic
way, in the paternity situation, children are the innocent party. While some people might see the refusal to accept DNA evidence of
nonpaternity as rewarding the wife for deception, I think courts look at its use as punishing the children."

Many of the cases follow similar patterns. Often a man gets genetic testing when his ex-wife limits his contact with the child
or when he begins to wonder why the child does not resemble him. In other cases, testing is prompted by relatives' hints that he is not the father.

The question of how long a man has to disavow paternity - or whether he can ever introduce genetic evidence of nonpaternity -
differs from state to state. Some states will hear such evidence only within two years of a child's birth; others allow as much as five years. Last fall, Ohio enacted a law exempting men from child support if genetic testing shows that they are not the father.
Similar legislation has been introduced in New Jersey.

In Maryland, in a group of cases involving unmarried men who had previously acknowledged paternity, the state's highest court ruled last year that there was no time limit on their right to use genetic testing to prove nonpaternity.

Late last year, seeking to create a national standard, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws proposed an act - introduced as legislation this year in several states, including Texas - giving men two years from a child's birth to
challenge paternity.

"In looking at this, we found that something like 5 percent of marital children, maybe up to 10 percent, are not the biological children of the husband," said Harry Tindall, the Houston lawyer who was chairman of the committee that drafted the model law. "I think there has to be some window of opportunity for challenge, but we say you have two years from birth to either put up or shut up."

But two years would not have helped Mr. Wise, a railroad engineer who said he had never doubted his paternity until he underwent cystic fibrosis testing two years ago, when his sons were 6, 8 and 10. By then, he and Ms. Fryar had divorced, and he had fought for, and won, custody of all four children.

He gave custody of the children to his former wife in January 1999, shortly before being tested, when the travel demands of his
job became overwhelming. At the time, the court granted him the same visitation rights his former wife had previously had, and ordered him to pay $1,100 a month in child support.

Even after finding that the boys were not his biological children, Mr. Wise said he had hoped to maintain his relationship with them.

"I told them I was still their daddy, and I loved them as much as the day they were born - the only thing that was different was I
was not their birth father," he said. "I would still like to go on doing things for them, directly, but I don't see why I should be
writing checks to a woman who deceived me all those years."

But Judge Robert H. Moore III of Howard County District Court refused to end Mr. Wise's child support obligation. He also cut off his visitation rights - a combination that baffles many experts in family law.

Judge Moore would not discuss the case. He referred questions to Celia Trimble Boone, the lawyer representing Dwayne Alexander, the
man Mr. Wise has come to believe is the children's biological father.

"The judge made it clear to all parties that they were not to talk to the children about this, and when Morgan did so, that's why he
cut off visitation," Ms. Boone said. "On child support, the judge just followed the law of Texas, which is that once paternity is
established, that's it."

Ms. Fryar has remarried. In the appeal, her brief argued that Mr. Wise should have known to raise the paternity issue in the divorce:
before the boys were born, the court papers said, Mr. Wise had found a note Ms. Fryar had written, but not sent, to Mr. Alexander,
offering to leave her husband. Furthermore, the documents indicate, Mr. Wise had suspicions of several other relationships she had had.

Next part below.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

2nd and last part of article:

Originally Posted by Tamar Lewin

Mr. Wise said in the court papers that he had not known his wife was seriously involved with Mr. Alexander, and that he and his wife
had talked about the note and, he thought, resolved their problems. "If I'd known she was cheating on me, I would have left her," he said.

For now, Mr. Wise has no formal contact with the children of his previous marriage, even though they all live in the same small West Texas town, where everyone knows the whole story. "About the only time I see the kids," he said, "is if I can go watch Carli's
volleyball game over at school, or if I run into one of the boys."

Since Mr. Wise got his test results, Mr. Miller said, two of his other clients have discovered they were not the biological fathers of the children they were rearing. Neither of those men, though, acted on the knowledge, choosing instead to maintain an unchanged
relationship with the children.

"I now advise every man who's getting a divorce to get paternity testing," Mr. Miller said. "I don't like it much, but now it seems
like it could be malpractice not to warn them."

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

Originally Posted by lochinvar

So, let me get this straight--he loved them and wanted to help them up until he found out they weren't his, at which point he then stopped loving them and stopped wanting to help them?

That topic is addressed in the following snippet:

Originally Posted by Tamar Lewin

Even after finding that the boys were not his biological children, Mr. Wise said he had hoped to maintain his relationship with them.

"I told them I was still their daddy, and I loved them as much as the day they were born - the only thing that was different was I was not their birth father," he said. "I would still like to go on doing things for them, directly, but I don't see why I should be writing checks to a woman who deceived me all those years."

Originally Posted by lochinvar

Some "father"!

As he said, no birth father at all. If anything, I think that those three boys should be grateful that someone who should not have any obligation towards them is willing to support them at all.

Originally Posted by lochinvar

Sounds to me like he just wants to punish his ex- for her previous infidelity.

And what would be wrong with that? In the present situation, he is forced by her to pay a lot for her infidelity.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

Originally Posted by JasminaJ

Yes Lochinvar. Neither of them looks to be a great prize. But the kid has to be cared for. None of us get the parents we deserve.

Someone (or some people!) is/are the genetic father of those three boys. That man/those men should be forced to take the financial responsibity, and pay back to the ex-husband for the years that he has payed from birth onwards. After all, the ex-husband has been doing that man/those men a service by supporting their children.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!


Let´s pick this apart:

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

When Wise went to court asking to be relieved of the child support payments that consumed a third of his take-home pay, he was turned down. Wise was later barred from contact with all four children because he had discussed the issue of their parentage with them in violation of the judge’s order, but he still had to keep the checks coming.

So, the court forced him to do something that he did not want, because he spoke the truth. Sounds like a 1st Amendment breach to me.

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

To some extent, Wise and others in his position are victims of a gap between law and technology. The law basically presumes, as in ancient Rome, that a woman’s husband is the father of any child born during the marriage.

Might have made sense 2000 years ago, but now we have DNA testing and truth can be established. Makes no sense to protect cheats now.

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

The 1996 federal welfare reform law directs that voluntary acknowledgment of paternity by an unwed father should be treated as a conclusive and binding establishment of paternity, although it allows for a 60-day rescission period; a 2000 Department of Health and Human Services report on paternity establishment strongly urged state child support collection agencies to follow these guidelines and to encourage the courts to do so as well.

So, a signature signed under the effect of misleading should be irrevocable? I am quite sure that there are plenty of other legal cases where such signatures can be nullified.

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

At present, four states -- Louisiana, Colorado, Iowa, and Ohio -- allow men to use DNA tests to disprove previously acknowledged paternity. Similar "paternity fraud" legislation is pending in California and in Georgia, where the initiative has been spearheaded by none other than Carnell Smith.

It might seem like a matter of simple justice. Why should a man support a child who isn’t his? If DNA testing can be used to exonerate people accused of rape or murder, why not use it to exonerate men accused of fathering children?

Yes, why? My guess is that those who would gain from allowing all DNA samples to be admissible as evidence, are a group that few politicians see as a group that they especially gain from if they are seen as backing.

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

Nevertheless, such proposals remain controversial. Earlier this year, an editorial in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that the Georgia bill dealing with DNA and paternity was "moving forward at an alarming pace" and warned, "Somebody in the General Assembly needs to apply the brakes to it quickly."

Applying brakes to the dissemination of truth. Just great.

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

What exactly is the peril opponents of such legislation are trying to avert? One common response is that one has to consider the best interest of the children.

The best interest of one innocent party being served by forcing another individual innocent party to bear the whole brunt. In many other cases, similar things are dealt with by making all taxpayers collectively bearing the brunt, so that no one person has to take it all.

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

Yet the exoneration of a falsely accused "father" does not mean that no child support will be paid; the real "culprit" can be pursued instead. Morgan Wise, for instance, has unsuccessfully tried to argue that his former wife’s lover or lovers who fathered the three boys he once believed to be his should be the person or persons paying child support.

Yes, why should those guys be let off the hook? They are the real dead-beat dads!

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

Critics of paternity fraud legislation also emphasize the social, emotional, and psychological damage children are likely to suffer when Daddy suddenly discards them.

Society enforces disruption of father-child link in some cases (dad going to jail, and other cases). Those innocent children already suffer that kind of damage, yet society accepts it for the greater good. Why should non-criminal men be forced to live in ignorance?

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

"Regardless of the circumstances of conception, for the child this is the only father he or she has known," Los Angeles attorney Jenny Skoble, director of the Child Support Project at the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law, wrote recently in Insight magazine. "If this man disappears from the child’s life, the child not only loses his financial support, but suffers the well-known emotional effects of being abandoned by a parent."

Well, that should not be too hard to figure out beforehand by the cheating wife before she cheats. Since she is one of them who have wrong, she should deal with it. The other one who has done wrong should also deal with it, out of his purse.

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

That’s often true, and it’s unfortunate (though it is worth noting that the women’s advocates typically making these arguments rarely show much concern about divorced fathers’ complaints that their ex-wives intentionally disrupt visitation).

As Inquartata once wrote: There is a double standard in double standards, when they favor men they are bad, when they favor women they are good.

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

It’s true that courts sometimes bar the alleged father not only from using DNA test results in a paternity challenge but from having the children tested, so as to avoid potentially traumatizing them.

Another argument against the USA system of barring some evidence from court. Luckily, here in Sweden, neither side in a legal case can bar the other from bringing up whatever that side wants to present as evidence - there only recourse against what they see as bad evidence is to disprove/dispute it. I think that is they way is should be everywhere, BTW. The kids are probably already traumatized by the divorce anyway. Furthermore, the court can not stop the husband of the mother from voicing his opinions to the kids before the court proceedings, so the genie is out of the bottle anyway.

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

Even so, a father who is unsure of his paternity may well withdraw from the children. It is sad, of course, when a man who has been a de facto father to a child for years suddenly and abruptly abandons him or her.

And why should he not withdraw? The entire "fatherhood" was a bunch of lies! What should be left, once the lies are exposed?

Originally Posted by Cathy Young

But surely a good portion of the blame for such tragic situations rests with mothers who cheat and lie.

She, together with her affair, should take ALL the blame!


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[Philistine]

My answer is: it depends.

I remember being surprised reading about the incontestability of paternity of babies conceived during a marriage when I was at law sch