Success--Bills to Stop Family Court Financial Abuses Pass Oklahoma Senate
We called an Action Alert last week after veterans’ groups contacted Fathers and Families and asked us to do a rapid campaign in support of Oklahoma’s SB 528 and SB 917–bills to protect active and reserve military servicemembers from financial abuses.
Your response to our Action Alert was overwhelming, and we thank all of our members and supporters who participated.
We are pleased to announce that after a tough fight, both SB 528 and SB 917 passed out of the Oklahoma Senate. They now head to the House of Representatives.
To learn more about the bills, click here. We will keep you informed of continuing developments.
Together with you in the love of our children,
Glenn Sacks, MA, Executive Director, Fathers and Families
Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S., Founder and Chairman of the Board, Fathers and Families
F & F Helps Introduce 2 Paternity Fraud Bills to Protect ‘Duped Dads’, Minors
Are
You
a Victim of Paternity Fraud? We Want to Know About Your Case–Please
Click Here.
Fathers and Families has helped introduce two new paternity fraud bills (SB 377 and SB 375) into the California legislature, both sponsored by Senator Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood), whom F & F named its California Senator of the Year for 2010.
Taken together, the bills will:
1) Help “duped dads” free themselves from being forced to pay 18 years of child support for other men’s children. The bills would allow these men to petition the family court to transfer the obligation from themselves to the actual biological fathers;
2) Crack open the current, restrictive time limit for challenging paternity. The bills would allow a duped dad the opportunity to file for relief after he “becomes aware of facts that lead him to reasonably believe that he is not the biological father of the child”; and
3) End the abusive practice of coercing boys under the age of 18 into signing legally binding paternity declarations without parental consent or legal counsel.
To read the bills, click on SB 377 and SB 375. If you are a victim of paternity fraud, whether in California or in another state, we want to know your story–please click here.
Fathers and Families has long been a leader in bringing attention to paternity fraud, doing many radio and TV interviews on the problem and publishing opinion columns on paternity fraud in the Orange County Register, the Baltimore Sun, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Detroit News, the Washington Times, and others.
Fathers and Families’ legislative representative Michael Robinson has played a key role in numerous legislative and judicial measures to address paternity fraud. These include helping to pass paternity fraud bills (AB 252 and SB 1333) which allow California child support obligors to use DNA evidence to set aside false paternity judgments and the concomitant child support orders.
Robinson also spearheaded a successful campaign to counter the County of Los Angeles' California Supreme Court petition to depublish the historic Navarro decision. Navarro was the first published case to hold that the statute of limitations did not apply in setting aside an old default judgment against a paternity fraud victim.
The battle against paternity fraud has been a long and difficult one. While in the California Assembly, Senator Wright introduced paternity fraud legislation in 2000 and again 2002, the latter being vetoed by then-Governor Gray Davis.
Other notable contributors include: Carnell Smith of US Citizens Against Paternity Fraud; Dianna Thompson, formerly of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children; Washington DC attorney Ron Henry; Linda Ferrer (the victorious attorney in Navarro); and numerous others.
We will keep you informed of events concerning SB 377 and SB 375 as the bills move forward. |
