2/22/08 Wall Street Journal: Daddy's DNA,
by Christine Rosen
    The cultural stereotype of infidelity is well entrenched: The lousy, cheating husband who destroys his family makes frequent appearances in the advice columns of women's magazines and is a stock character (usually played opposite a vulnerable Valerie Bertinelli-type) in made-for-TV movies.
    Yet the problem of female infidelity is equally serious, particularly when it results in the birth of a child. When a woman strays, how can a man know if the child is really his? Maury Povich has made paternity testing a staple of his TV show. And while the DNA samples in his "Who's Your Daddy?" segments have revealed the paternity of plenty of guys who had been unwilling to acknowledge their flesh-and-blood offspring, the test results have also shown that the doubts of many other men were fully justified. A surprising number of the women who contacted Maury to prove paternity, in fact, had no clear idea of who their children's father was -- some have appeared on the show countless times trying to solve the mystery. Often a man is so relieved when Maury bellows "You are NOT the father!" that he ecstatically whoops and dances around the stage while Maury attempts to comfort the obviously distraught mother.
    But outside the world of daytime television, the "Who's Your Daddy?" problem -- "paternal discrepancy" is the official term for a situation where a man is unknowingly raising another man's child -- has had little impact on the public consciousness unless it involves celebrities. The dueling claims to fatherhood made in the wake of Anna Nicole Smith's death and actor Eddie Murphy's false claim not to have fathered the daughter of Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown come to mind.
    That might be about to change, though. In a 2005 article in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, researchers who had studied families in the U.S. , Europe, Russia , Canada , South Africa and several other countries wrote that they had found rates of paternal discrepancy of about 4%, on average. Which means that approximately one man in 25 named as the biological father on a child's birth certificate is not the real father -- and may not know it. The authors of the study also noted an apparent increase in public interest in determining paternity: Between 1991 and 2001, the number of people seeking paternity tests more than doubled in the U.S. , to 310,490. Although it is difficult to measure whether infidelity is on the rise, these numbers suggest that suspicion about it might be.
    For every burgeoning cultural crisis there is a product that offers to solve it: Enter Identigene, a company owned by Sorenson Genomics that is now selling an over-the-counter paternity test. Available in Rite-Aid and Meijer drugstores nationwide (as well as over the Internet), the test has a suggested retail price of $29.99 (plus an additional $119 lab fee). The box features a tasteful sketch of mother and child and promises test results "admissible in most courts of law" three to five business days after you send in cheek swabs from the child and "alleged father." As Identigene's Web site promises, "Putting your mind at ease, or making sure that a potential parent acts responsibly, has never been more convenient, confidential, affordable, or accurate."
    The benefits of over-the-counter paternity testing are clear, particularly for men, and Identigene seems subtly to be marketing the test to them. The Web site notes, for example, that "32% of all paternity tests exclude alleged fathers." Inexpensive paternity testing could theoretically level the playing field for men involved in child-support cases; court-ordered tests can cost as much as $500. Paternity fraud litigation is on the rise; a 2006 study in New Hampshire found that nearly 30% of fathers paying child support were not the biological parent of the child they were helping. Fathers' rights advocates have been working to change state laws that, although well-intentioned in their effort to protect children from the taint of illegitimacy, have long held that married men are legally assumed to be the fathers of children born to the marriage, even in the face of genetic evidence to the contrary.
    In fact, the increasing popularity of paternity testing seems to confirm what sociobiologists have been noting for years: From a strictly genetic point of view, it has always been in some women's interest to adopt a "mixed mating" strategy -- acquiring supposedly superior genes from one man but turning to another for the resources to raise the child. Indeed, a recent study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology argues that one reason men produce so many defective sperm during any given sexual interaction is that they are required to produce so much so quickly -- as part of a broader evolutionary strategy to try to compensate for the fact of female infidelity.
    But paternity testing raises new challenges as well, not least with regard to privacy and consent. Identigene hawks a version of its product called the "Discreet Paternity Test," which encourages consumers to send in "licked stamps, ear wax, fingernail clippings, socks, chewed gum" or a "used razor" to surreptitiously test another person. Although it notes that such test results might not be legally binding in court, the company adds that "sometimes it is important that the DNA test is done without the knowledge of others."
    Identigene's trademarked slogan is "For questions only DNA testing can answer." It even offers a "DNA Consultant" via a toll-free number. But it seems unlikely that the perky looking woman pictured with a headset on its Web site will be able to guide you through the emotional mine field that your marriage will become if you find your husband swiping your baby's cheek with a gigantic Q-Tip or surreptitiously searching your handsome male neighbor's garbage for a bit of chewed gum.
    There are some questions raised by paternity testing that even the most devoted ethicists (and marriage counselors) might have trouble answering. These tests are really tests of trust. And like many modern technologies of suspicion, such as GPS tracking devices and software that secretly tracks the keystrokes on another person's computer -- they make it very easy, perhaps too easy, to indulge our doubts about our significant others.
    Perhaps the growing interest in paternity testing reveals a broader cultural anxiety about fidelity in contemporary society, an anxiety exacerbated by the fact that an increasing number of parents bear and rear children outside the institution of marriage. Adam Phillips, a British psychotherapist who has published a book of pithy observations on monogamy, writes: "Not everyone believes in monogamy, but everyone lives as though they do. . . . Believing in monogamy, in other words, is not unlike believing in God." In the church of monogamy there are many secret heretics. New technologies might help us discover infidelity with more accuracy and convenience, but they are unlikely to solve the more vexing and timeless dilemma of why we stray.
    Ms. Rosen is a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington .

8/6/07 Associated Press: DNA shows Chris Rock not the dad, lawyer says,
    Savannah , Ga. A lawyer for Chris Rock said Monday that a court-ordered DNA test proved Rock is not the father of a 13-year-old boy whose mother tried to sue the comedian for support earlier this year. 
    Rock's attorney, John Mayoue of Atlanta , said a Bulloch County judge sent results of the paternity test to lawyers on both sides of the case. 
    "The results of the test are that Chris Rock is not the father of this child," Mayoue said. "It is conclusive." 
    The mother, however, disputed the test results. 
    Kali Bowyer, who lives in Bulloch County west of Savannah , tried in March to file a paternity lawsuit against Rock seeking child support and medical coverage for her son, Jordan. She withdrew the lawsuit after court officials told her it was outside the southeast Georgia county's jurisdiction because Rock is a New Jersey resident. 
    However, Rock asked the Georgia court in April to start paternity proceedings to resolve the case.
    Bulloch County Superior Court Judge John R. Turner ordered DNA testing on Rock and the boy June 8. 
    Rock and his wife, Malaak, said in a statement Monday they were happy to put the case to rest. They accused Bowyer of telling "multiple lies" to sell her story to tabloids. 
    "We also express our deepest prayers for the welfare of Ms. Bowyer's son who has continually been embarrassed and exposed in the media by his mother," Rock's statement said. 
    Bowyer said Monday she had never received money for her story and she believed Rock had violated a confidentiality agreement by making the paternity test results public. 
    "I could've sworn we weren't supposed to talk about it until we were done with mediation," Bowyer said. 
    She said she planned to ask the judge to order another DNA test to challenge the results of the one that ruled out Rock as her child's father. 
    Bowyer, 35, said she met Rock at a Los Angeles nightclub when she was living in California 13 years ago. 
    She denied making any money from the case despite offers of thousands of dollars from television shows and tabloid magazines. 
    "I am sick and tired of being made out to be a liar and a fraud," she said.
    Rock recently directed and starred in the film "I Think I Love My Wife," and is behind the hit television series "Everybody Hates Chris," which is based on his childhood. He and his wife have been married for 10 years and have two young children.

6/22/07 Wall Street Journal: The Informed Reader: Genetic Testing Begets Paternity Surprises from The Atlantic - July/August,
    As genetic testing has become more common, so has an uncomfortable side effect: paternity surprises. Genetics students, reports Steve Olsen in the Atlantic , are commonly taught that 5% to 15% of the men on birth certificates arent the biological parents of their children (subscription required). Men pass their Y chromosome to their sons intact, so it is possible to trace fatherhood back many generations. As more people opt to have DNA tests to check for genetic diseases or to explore family history, the more geneticists are finding that some mens fathers arent who they thought they were. Any project that has more than 20 or 30 people in it is likely to have an oops in it, says Bennett Greenspan, whose company, Family Tree DNA, tries to find common links for separate families.
    The rate of non-paternity can vary from community to community. The Sorenson Genealogy Foundation in Salt Lake City found that the nonpaternity rate from a sample of father-son pairs among its 100,000 volunteers is less than 2%. At the other extreme, Mr. Olson reports that an unpublished study of blood groups in a British town found that around 30% of the towns husbands werent the fathers of their children.
    Such revelations are likely to increase as medical advances and cheaper technology allow doctors to determine patients susceptibility to certain diseases through a scan of their DNA. Indeed, the Personal Genome Project at Harvard University warns potential volunteers to have their DNA sequences posted on the Web that they could be used to infer paternity. While geneticists in large population studies tend to keep the news to themselves, genetic counselors, who help parents of children with birth defects decide whether they should have more children, generally tell the couple what has happened. In such cases, most counselors inform the mother, but not the father a practice a vocal minority within the trade disputes. Robin Moroney

2/2/07 Miami Herald: Man must support child who is not his; The state Supreme Court ruled that a man must pay child support for a kid who isn't his, but a new law could help him escape the payments,
by Marc Caputo
    Tallahassee - Richard Edward Parker seemed to have the perfect evidence to avoid child-support payments: a DNA test showing the child isn't his. Florida 's Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that the Fort Lauderdale boat worker missed a one-year deadline to file a claim against his estranged wife, Margaret J. Parker, for fraudulently representing his paternity when a court ordered him to pay support for the 3-year-old boy in 2001.

10/30/06 Miami Herald: Florida men get a break on false paternity: A new state law allows men a way out of child-support payments when they can prove that they are not the child's biological father,
by Monica Hatcher
    Bobby Rhames never suspected that his live-in girlfriend might be cheating on him, so he didn't ask questions when she became pregnant.
    ''She said it was mine, and I didn't doubt it,'' Rhames, a carpenter who lives in Quincy , remembered thinking.
    Doubts surfaced seven years later, after the couple split and after a few weird comments and unexplained incidents. Rhames took the child for a DNA test. The result, he said, blew his mind: He was not the father. He was equally bewildered, though, when a state judge refused to release him from $450 monthly child-support payments, a hefty chunk of his pay.
    Until recently, men like Rhames have raged against Florida 's legal system that has forced them to pay for other men's children.
    Many may now have a way to shed that financial burden legally.
    Florida 's so-called ''paternity fraud'' law took effect in July. It gives a man up to 18 years from a child's birth to challenge a paternity judgment when genetic evidence shows that he is not the biological father and other conditions are met.
    If he prevails, his obligation to pay child support ends.
    Men's-rights groups say the law is a small step in correcting a system that has penalized innocent men for the lies and mistakes of others.
    OBVIOUSLY UNFAIR'
    ''This bill brings fairness back to the process,'' said Rep. Curtis Richardson (D-Tallahassee), the bill's main sponsor. ``It was obviously unfair to these men, and in some instances their families.''
    Rhames said he and his wife are going without health insurance to make the child-support payments. Other men have complained of having to deny things to their biological children to pay for those who are not.
    It's unclear how many men may be able to take advantage of the new law.
    Statistics gathered by the Florida Department of Revenue indicate that men who contest claims in paternity suits are frequently exonerated by DNA tests. Last year, 30 percent of the 15,495 men targeted as possible fathers in paternity proceedings turned out not to be.
    Tony Spalding, executive director of Fort Lauderdale-based Dads Against Discrimination, said he knew of at least 20 men who had already begun legal action.
    Rhames, for one, already has a court date set in Gadsden County to make his case. He'll be required to show the judge that he is current on his payments, provide the DNA test results, and attest, by meeting various conditions, that he was unaware the child was not his when he took responsibility.
    ''I think it's a big victory,'' Rhames said.
    But child advocates say the law is not a victory for everyone.
    They point to the absence of a provision requiring the court to consider the best interest of the child.
    'If, after seven years of raising this child, of being the dad, of acting like the dad, of loving the child -- what does it do to the child to let somebody pop up and say, `Whoops, I don't want to be your dad anymore,' '' said Andrea Moore, executive director of Florida's Children First.
    ''Parenting is not only a biological event,'' Moore added. ``We are making children suffer for the bad acts of their parents.''
    Women caring for children also will lose what may be vital support. The average monthly cost of raising a child in a single-parent household last year was $609.86, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
    Previously, the law did not provide a means to challenge a paternity ruling, unless a man contested the judgment within a year after a divorce.
    In a high-profile paternity case in Broward County earlier this year, a judge threw out the case of Robert Parker, who could prove that he was not the biological father of his ex-wife's baby, because he filed after the statute of limitations. He was ordered to continue to pay $1,200 a month for the child.
    The law has traditionally assumed that a married man is the father of any child born of the marriage, even if it isn't his.
    Paternity, or the state or condition of being a father, is usually established during divorce proceedings to decide child-support payments and visitation rights.
    For unwed couples, a man becomes a legal father by signing a consent affidavit, usually at the hospital when the baby is born. The courts also have the power to declare someone a dad for the purpose of establishing child-support payments.
    TESTS LITTLE-KNOWN
    DNA tests, which cost between $100 and $150, are not mandatory, and many men don't know to ask for them. That means there could be thousands who are supporting children who are not theirs, said Ronald Henry, a Washington , D.C. , lawyer who wrote an article on paternity fraud in the spring issue of Family Law Quarterly.
    Welfare-reform legislation passed in 1996 brought financial incentives to states that could meet targets for finding ''noncustodial'' parents, usually fathers.
    The goal, Henry said, is to minimize welfare costs by maximizing child-support collections from fathers. ''The only problem is nowhere does the law say that you have to get the right guy,'' he said.
    Darren Michaels of Sarasota , for example, claims that he was made to pay child support for a child he has never seen or knew existed.
    After dating for little more than a week, Michaels said, the woman called a few months later to tell him she was pregnant.
    'She said, `I'm pregnant and you might be the father. The emphasis was on `might.' Then, next thing I know, I was being served papers.''
    Michaels, 45, works as an independent salesman to avoid having his wages garnished.
    Michaels claims that his lawyer told him not to attend the court hearing. When he didn't show up, he was slapped with what is called a default order for paternity and child support. He has been grappling with that mistake for 14 years.
    Michaels said the mother has ignored at least five court orders to bring the child in for testing, yet he is still on the hook for the money. He has no idea where the mother and child live. He said that he owes at least $30,000 and that a warrant for his arrest has been issued.
    ''I've been living on the lam,'' he said. ``This is one of America 's judicial hellholes.''
    The new law doesn't allow a man who has paid child support to recoup past payments, or to seek legal action against a woman who may have deceived him or withheld information about other possible fathers.
    Rhames believes that's the next step. First, men need to know that the new law -- which the Legislature passed with little fanfare -- could mean freedom from court-ordered payments.
    ''The law is going to change a lot of wrongdoing by women,'' Rhames said. ``I'm not talking bad about women either, only the ones out there doing it. They should be prosecuted. It's fraud.''

10/31/99 Dallas Morning News: "DNA Tests Don't Let Dads Off the Hook: Man Supports Sons Not Biologically His,"
    DNA evidence of paternity - though widely used to order child support payments - often is not accepted when trying to stop them.
    A central reason is the U.S. judicial system's age-old, hard-to-rebut presumption that husband equals father.  There's no easy place in the equation for the modern miracle of DNA testing, which in recent years has brought powerful new facts to bear on legal matters and has given families information they sometimes can't cope with.
    Courts typically have made children's interests paramount, determined to keep them from becoming innocent victims of a high-tech blood feud.  Financially and emotionally, the reasoning goes, minors need the man who has functioned as their dad.
    Officials estimate that accredited labs - those whose results can be used in court - will perform more than 250,000 paternity tests this year.  That's more than triple the number a decade ago.
    The companies' experience shows that women, for whatever reason, misidentify the fathers of their children with some frequency.  DNA Diagnostics Center, an industry leader, says 30 percent of the men it tests prove to be misidentified.
    Similar numbers come from the Texas attorney general's office, which enforces child support: about a quarter of the men who disputed paternity in the last year turned out to be right.  In Florida, the proportion was one-third.
    If a man stipulates during divorce that the children are his and does not test until later, there is little hope of ending child support.  As a rule, courts bar people from relitigating a case once it has been adjudicated and the appeal window has closed.
    In an unpublished December 1998 opinion, a Texas appeals court rejected a husband's claim that his ex-wife fraudulently concealed her extramarital activity.  That same month, a Philadelphia man lost a similar fight before Pennsylvania's highest court and has since been unable to get a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court.
    Even if the husband tries to contest paternity before divorce, he may well fail.  Several states - including California but not Texas - allow no rebuttal of the fatherhood presumption unless the man can prove he was sterile, impotent or not cohabitating with the woman at the time of conception.
    Other states do permit challenges such as DNA testing - but only if it's done within 5 years of the child's birth, as currently recommended by the National Commission on Uniform State Laws.  Drafters on the Commission have proposed to cut the number to 2 years, writing that "a longer period may have severe consequences for the child."   Texas now has no limit tied to birth. 

6/2/99 Wall Street Journal: Courts Favor Ancient Paternity Rule Over DNA Tests,
by Margaret A. Jacobs
    For centuries, when families fought over who was a child's father, courts followed a rule known as the presumption of paternity.
    The rule says that unless a man can show he Is sterile, impotent or, In the words of 18th-century British jurist William Blackstone, that he was beyond "the four seas bordering the kingdom" at the time of conception, he is the legal father of any child born to his wife during their marriage.  First adopted by the Romans and then, 500 years ago, by the English, the rule was intended to prevent husbands from attacking their wives' fidelity in court.
    Today, DNA testing can tell a married man with near certainty whether he is the father of his wife's child. But appeals courts in many states are disallowing genetic evidence in suits brought by husbands arguing they shouldn't pay child support. Instead, the courts are clinging to the old presumption of paternity rule.
    The rule enjoys strong support from academics and women's groups. Joan Entmacher, an attorney with the National Women's Law Center , a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington , D.C. , says genetic testing heightens rancor between divorcing parties at a time when courts are trying to make marital splits less adversarial and more focused on children's needs. "Just because testing is available doesn't mean we should allow it in every case," she says.
    Many men disagree, including Gerald Miscovich, a computer programmer from Philadelphia , who lost a seven-year battle to avoid paying child support to his ex-wife. In December, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court voted to affirm a lower court ruling saying "family interests" outweighed the ordering of blood tests that might prove he isn't the father of his ex-wife's son, also named Gerald. The lower court had found Mr. Miscovich had clearly established a bond with the boy, who was four when Mr. Miscovich says he privately obtained DNA evidence of his nonpaternity. Mr. Miscovich tried unsuccessfully to get a hearing at the U.S. Supreme Court.
    The high court last waded into the controversy in 1989, when it rejected a California man's effort to establish through DNA evidence that he was the biological father of a child born to his former lover and was therefore entitled to visitation and other legal rights. The woman and her husband objected. The court, by a 5-4 vote, ruled against the man, rejecting his view that California 's presumption of paternity was unconstitutional. The state's policy excludes "inquiries into the child's paternity that would be destructive of family Integrity and privacy," wrote Justice Scalia.
    Now men's groups are lobbying state legislatures in Pennsylvania , Michigan , Ohio and other states to change paternity laws. In an age of jet travel and in vitro fertilization, the presumption of paternity is antiquated," says Victor Smith, president of Dads Against Discrimination, a lobbying and support group for divorced and unwed fathers in Portland, Ore. Mr. Smith argues that it's inconsistent that state child-welfare agencies can use the results of DNA testing to establish that an unmarried man is the father of a child, and therefore responsible for child support, but not allow a married man to use it to get out of paying.
    Meanwhile, a panel of judges, academies and lawyers convened by the influential National Commission on Uniform State Laws is reviewing its model law on parentage in light of advances in DNA testing technology.
    "Technology has stood 500 years of law on its head," says Paula Roberts, a Washington , D.C. , lawyer who is an advisor to the panel. For the past 10 years, courts have allowed states to we DNA evidence to pin paternity on unmarried dads, recognizing that the probability of the tests' accuracy is now as high as 99.99%.
    When the group's model law was first written in the 1950s and adopted by many states, Ms. Roberts says, tests based on blood typing could only establish that a man wasn't the father, leaving the courts without any way to determine who should
provide support.
    In 1973, reflecting the development of more sophisticated blood tests, the model law was revised to give judges the option of allowing the tests as evidence until a child is five years old. About a dozen states follow that model.
    Now, the panel is expected to back away from that approach, reflecting the insistence of many women that testing could prove emotionally and financially devastating to children. Ms. Roberts says the group will compromise and recommend that courts allow husbands to introduce genetic evidence of nonpaternity only before a child is two years old.
    Any recommendation by the panel would have to be approved by the full National Commission on Uniform State Laws, by the American Bar Association and state legislatures before it becomes law.
    Even if the group's recommendation had been law when Mr. Miscovich went to court, he would have been out of luck.
    Although his son was 22 months old when he separated from his wife, Mr. Miscovich waited until the boy was four to have a DNA test. He did So at the urging of his new fiancee, who had pointed out that both Mr. Miscovich and his ex-wife had blue eyes and couldn't have produced the brown-eyed child.
    "I agonized over the decision to tell him," Mr. Miscovich says.
    He adds that his fiancee consulted a psychologist who said it would be better for the boy to know the truth. But when he finally told the boy, Mr. Miscovich says, his ex-wife moved across the state and told the child that Mr. Miscovich didn't care for him.
    Mr. Miscovich hasn't seen the boy, now 11, since then, though he continues to pay more than $500 a month in child support.
    Mr. Miscovich also says that, contrary to the court's conclusion, he never developed a strong bond with the boy. However, he adds that he would have liked to haven played "a limited nonparental role" in the boy's life.
    Mr. Miscovich's former wife, who has since remarried, declined through her
lawyer to comment.
    In Ohio , Dennis Caron, a corporate headhunter in Columbus , has brought a civil-rights suit in federal court alleging that the state's paternity law is unconstitutional because it violates the equal-protection and due-process rights of men.
    After Mr. Caron's divorce was final in 1997, his ex-wife hinted that he wasn't the biological father of then seven-year-old Tommy, Mr. Caron says. Tests he subsequently had done on his own showed he wasn't the biological father, he says. He then tried to overturn the divorce-and avoid paying child support-by using the DNA test to prove fraud. The judge refused, he says.
    Mr. Caron then stopped making court ordered child-support payments of $520 a month. He says he rarely sees Tommy and believes visits would cause Tommy who knows that someone else is his biological father, too much pain.
    Andrea Yagoda, a Columbus , Ohio , lawyer who represents Gina Manfresca, Mr. Caron's former wife, says her client "believes Mr. Caron is the biological father of the boy and has no reason to think otherwise."
    Some trial-court judges, uncomfortable with imposing child support on men who may have been deceived about their children's origins, have accepted DNA evidence of nonpaternity.
    In state court in Portland , Ore. , Judge Paula Kurshner recently told Steve Albrecht, a disk jockey, that she would grant an unusual order of nonpaternity for his ex-wife's son, Tyler, coupled with the right to visit the boy, who turns two in August.
    "I was there at the hospital and I raised him until he was a year and a half," says Mr. Albrecht.
    Mr. Albrecht adds that he was in "complete sorrow" after receiving the results of the DNA test. Still, he says he is grateful that the ruling will save him $50,000 to $100,000 in child support and possibly college tuition.
    His ex-wife, Lisa Albrecht, an apartment manager in Portland , says she agreed to the test because she believed it would prove Mr. Albreeht was the father of Tyler and would save her marriage.
    Lisa Albrecht is now trying to get child, support from a former boyfriend, who she believes fathered her son.
    "The DNA test destroyed my life and Tyler 's life," she says. Her son, she adds, doesn't understand what has happened and just "wants his daddy."