Paternity Laws and Child Support and their Application to DI

I would expect that if a marriage that included any children created by DI were to fail that the social dad, the DI Dad, would honor his relationship to his children and have no issue paying child support as part of any arrangement reached upon the marriage’s dissolution.

As stated by the moderator to the Yahoo Group SpermDonors “the general rule [in this country] was that married persons were conclusively presumed to be the parents of children born or conceived during the marriage” including DI kids. In contrast to that rule USA Today reported on May 4, 2006 that a legislative bill in Florida would change that where the petitioning husband can prove via DNA tests that he is not the biological parent of the children born to the marriage in question. The bill ending up expiring before being voted upon but is indicative of a trend across several US States according to the same USA Today story.

My initial reaction to this is that if a DI Dad truly loved his kids I can’t imagine him fighting an order for child support. Granted I don’t know all the facts surrounding the growth of these laws but it seems to me they probably grew out of cases of true adultery and not so much cases of DI created children but the application is scary.

As stated within the Yahoo Group SpermDonors the result may validate the importance of blood relationships as advocated by DC persons but with the unintended effect of leaving a DI created minor without child support which certainly would not be any DC advocate’s goal.

The only other comment I would have is that if a DI Dad were to request cessation of child support under such a law they could probably kiss any relationship goodbye between themselves and those kids. Again I doubt these laws were written with DI in mind.