Sacramento, California

Dear Assemblyman Wright,

The Coalition of Parent Support is proud to support your bill, AB 2240 Paternity Testing.

This measure is a common-sense solution to a vexing problem facing California men and children who’ve been deceived about the nature of their blood relationship. Existing law, as you know, creates a scenario whereby women with more than one sexual partner must make a choice about which one to designate as the father of a child born out-of-wedlock in order to receive public assistance or child support. This decision is frequently made on the basis of the mother’s perception about which partner will be the better provider, and not on the basis of actual knowledge of paternity. When the wrong man is designated the father, the real father is deprived of a relationship with his child, and is also relieved of his duty to support the child, and the child is wronged by being deprived of a relationship with his actual father.

The truth generally triumphs over fiction, but such victory is not always immediate. We’ve been informed by several of our members that mothers tend to reveal paternity fraud in the midst of domestic conflict years after the child is born, at a time apparently calculated to inflict the maximum emotional harm to the duped cuckold. The law should not provide citizens with such a destructive weapon, a weapon that ultimately harms the innocent child more than anyone.

We have a strong belief in our society that parents and parents alone should be responsible for the care and support of their children. In the interest of this belief, we have erected a multi-billion dollar enterprise for enforcing child support obligations. Existing paternity law, which makes it not only easy but desirable to designate someone other than the father as the parent of a child makes a mockery of the child support system, converting it into a weapon for inflicting long-lasting and serious emotional damage on adults and children alike.

It is much better to prevent false declarations of paternity from being made in the first place than to attempt the impossible task of eliminating this damage in the long term. We strongly support your efforts to bring simple justice to paternity law.

Very truly yours,

Richard Bennett

Vice-President