DETROIT (WXYZ) - The State of Michigan is ordering a Detroit man to pay tens of thousands of dollars, or go to prison. The reason? He owes back child support for a child that everyone agrees is not his.
"I feel like I’m standing in front of a brick wall with nowhere to go," said Carnell Alexander.
He says he learned about the paternity case against him during a traffic stop in Detroit in the early 90s. The officer told him he is a deadbeat dad, there was a warrant out for his arrest.
“I knew I didn’t have a child, so I was kind of blown back,” said Alexander.
The state said he fathered a child in 1987, and ignored a court order to pay up. It was the first Carnell had heard of the court order. He'd never even met the child.
“And when you were telling them in court – that it was not my child?" "They told me it was too late to get a DNA test," said Alexander.
It also was not easy to get a DNA test. Alexander didn't know where the woman was that had claimed he fathered a child. He only had an 8th-grade education, off-and-on employment at the time, and no money to hire help.
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3 comments:
Paternity is the crux of child support orders. If the kid isn't yours, someone else is the deadbeat dad. As for it being "too late for a DNA test", this person needs to have a better public defender or an attorney who will take the case pro bono.
The court is full of it on this one. His only crime was contempt of court for allegedly failing to respond to the summons' and in absentia court ruling to pay up. Any decent judge should today ensure that the paternity and child support rulings are vacated, based upon the DNA findings exonerating him. If the court wants to charge him with contempt of court for not answering the summons', then that's another case altogether, not linked to paternity and child support findings.
He should turn arround and sue that woman for the $30,000 for ruining his life! Case solved!
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