posted in Child Support
on Wednesday, February 22, 2012.
In April 1986, a 62-year-old man and his wife were married. Living in Connecticut, the couple birthed two daughters: one in December 1986 and another in December 1992. Their divorce came in 2007, 15 years after their youngest daughter was born.
In 1993, the wife started a consulting company with a man she had began working with in the late 1980s. This man would later turn out to be the father of the couple’s youngest daughter, and the husband wanted reimbursed for what was effectively the child support that was never paid.
Suspicions began to grow in the mind of the husband over the years. The co-worker had been to recitals for the girl over the years; he had even been in the car on the ride home from the hospital when she was born. So the husband took some of his hair and had it DNA tested. He was right. She wasn’t his daughter.
The husband later attempted to sue the man for half of what it cost to raise the girl, who is now 19 years old. This amount added up to $190,000, but the husband was not allowed to pursue the suit. The original judge had indicated that other cases such as this were decided in a similar manner to avoid harming the mentality of the child, despite her age.
But the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned that decision. The man will be allowed to pursue reimbursement because both the biological father and mother openly stated that the 19-year-old girl was their child in two separate testimonies. The case was sent back to Middletown Superior Court where it was originally heard.
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