Man waited too long to challenge paternity, owes $30K in child support
The mother of a child that authorities say Carnell Alexander fathered in 1987 agrees that Alexander is not the father. In fact, a DNA test also showed that he isn’t the dad. Meanwhile, the actual father of the now-adult child has come forward.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that Alexander owes $30,000 in past-due child support, a Michigan judge says.
Although Alexander can prove he wasn’t served in the long-ago proceeding that established his paternity, he waited too long to challenge that finding in court, a Wayne County Circuit Court judge told him during a Tuesday hearing, according to the Detroit Free Press and WXYZ.
“That motion must be filed within 3 years after the child’s birth, or within one year after the order of filiation is entered. The defendant has failed to timely file this motion setting aside the acknowledgement of parentage,” said Judge Kathleen McCarthy. She also expressed outrage that Alexander “for two and a half decades failed to take this matter seriously,” the station reports.
Alexander, who is now represented by a pro bono lawyer Cherika Harris, says there are good reasons why he didn’t do more sooner. And, he says, he said in every court hearing he attended that he was not, in fact, the father.
With only an eighth-grade education, no money and no income, having just gotten out of prison (where he was when a process server claimed to have given him legal paperwork at a former address), Alexander wasn’t equipped to fight the legal battle on his own and couldn’t find a lawyer to represent him.
“How can you start a case with a lie?” said Alexander. “The mom lied. The process server lied. Now I have to pay for it.”
