Gabriel Cornejo has sex with a woman. It cost him more than a dinner.
In 2003, a child support court in Texas ruled that Gabriel Cornejo, 45, had to pay child support to his ex-girlfriend who had recently given birth because she vowed that there was no way he wasn’t the rightful dad.
And they want the $65,000 in back child support he owes, which hardly seems unreasonable. After all, you do the crime, you do the time, fatherhood edition. But the unnamed woman’s vow “that there was no way he wasn’t the rightful dad” may be deeply persuasive if one believes the survivor, except for this stuff called DNA.
Cornejo, a father who’s raising his own three kids and two nephews, said he found out about the child support payments when a deputy showed up at his door last year. The deputy gave Cornejo court papers that claimed the state of Texas thinks he has another child.
The child, a teenaged girl, is daughter of his ex-girlfriend, who he broke up with 16 years ago. Cornejo, who claimed he never met the girl, set out to meet her for the first time.
“She’s a wonderful girl,” he said. “Very smart. A lot going on for herself.”
Wonderful or not isn’t the question, however.
Cornejo, his wife and his ex-girlfriend all agreed he should get a paternity test, and he did.
“The results came in,” Cornejo said. “I’m not the father.”
There is good reason to have a chat with the unnamed ex-girlfriend about her “no way” claim that Cornejo was the father, but the time for that chat was in 2003.
In 2003, Cornejo’s ex-girlfriend went to court and said Cornejo was the only possible father of her child.
The state of Texas got what it calls a “default judgement” and started assessing child support payments. They continued to add up, and now total nearly $65,000. Cornejo said he was never told.
Court records suggest, but do not prove, that he got a subpoena years ago. Cornejo denies it.
Probably not a subpoena, but reporters and legal words never had a loving relationship, unlike Cornejo and his ex-girlfriend. Whether it was sewer service, substituted service that never found its way into Cornejo’s hands or any other number of possible failures, including his having actually received process and thrown it away or ignored it, who knows? That was 2003 and the State wanted daddy to pay up and got its judgment.
So now that DNA proves that he’s not the father, problem solved? Oh please.
His ex-girlfriend’s attorney, Carel Stith, claimed that money was taken out of Cornejo’s paycheck several years ago and he didn’t contest it, and that in itself can satisfy a court argument that he should have handled the matter long ago.
“There can be consequences, even if you don’t do anything,” Stith told local news.
Whether that’s accurate matters, and yet doesn’t matter. If his paycheck was garnished, he surely had notice of the judgment and the law requires you to deal with it. Laches, like karma, sucks. Then again, maybe he had other things going on in his life, or lacked the money to retain counsel. There might be an excuse, good or not. Or Stith is mistaken. That can happen too.
But what’s really at stake here? Didn’t Cornejo have sex with the mother of his not-his-child? But for having slacker sperm, could he not have been the father rather than some other guy who mom swore couldn’t possibly be the one? Is poor motility enough to overcome child support?
Texas’ family code, chapter 161, states that even if one is not the biological father, they still owe support payments that accrued before the paternity test proves otherwise. In Cornejo’s case, that amounts to some $65,000.
Cornejo and his attorney, Cheryl Coleman, must now persuade a judge to re-open the case – as the original court order cannot be amended. If that doesn’t happen, he must pay up or face time behind bars.
The choices shape up rather poorly for Cornejo at this point if he can’t get the 2003 default judgment re-opened. If he doesn’t happen to have a spare $65,000 lying around, or would prefer not to deny the three kids who are his food and shelter, then he goes to the slammer.
This is hardly the first case where a guy has been held to pay child support for a child that wasn’t his. It’s even in Snopes. On the one hand, there is a need for finality in the law, so that disputes don’t go on forever and nothing is ever accomplished. On the other hand, when an outcome is conclusively proven false, should the law jail a guy for it anyway?
What should also be noted, however, is that the law has made a choice, that the need to support children, without their being a burden on the state, is paramount to such details as the guy threatened with jail actually be the father. One might suspect that some random guy who had sex with a woman would not end up being saddled with the support of some other guy’s child upon pain of incarceration, but the state has decided to avoid the mess.
Not your kid? Too bad. You should have figured that out in the first place. You snooze, you lose. Unless you never knew anything about the kid, in which case you didn’t snooze but still lose.
Assuming the state’s position, that it’s not the taxpayer’s job to cover the cost of the consequence of your sex life, is reasonable, there remains a glaring gap here: the mother of the child is the mother of the child. She too had sex; obviously more than Cornejo. So there’s $65,000 owed for covering the cost of bringing up baby? Fair enough. What happened to equality such that mom pays the freight for her actions just as the state wants dad to do, even if dad isn’t dad at all? You keep saying you want equality, and with it comes the burdens as well as the benefits.
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What are the odds she swore to a lie in obtaining that default judgement? Lies have consequences too.
That could be, but it’s impossible to say without more information.
Well, sure. We don’t even know if she believed it.
And we don’t know that she didn’t. Why are we going down this path when nothing useful can come of it?
Simply amplifying your point that it is impossible to say without more information (because it wasn’t a “lie” if she believed it).
Well, there’s nothing better than having my point about the pointlessness of conjecture in the absence of any information whatsoever amplified. Let’s crank it up to 11 since it’s completely pointless.
There can be consequences, even if you don’t do anything,” Stith told local news.
Let me fix that quote:
“Especially” if you don’t do anything.
“So there’s $65,000 owed for covering the cost of bringing up baby? Fair enough. What happened to equality such that mom pays the freight for her actions just as the state wants dad to do, even if dad isn’t dad at all?”
Isn’t the theory that they are both responsible, and that she’s already paid her half? $130K is a not-unreasonable estimate of the cost of raising a child.
Does shit that pops into your head morph into a “theory” that miraculously becomes worthy of discussion? No. No it does not.
In Canada (where I practice), child support is determined for the payor taking into account a notional amount of support for the payee. I don’t know if it the same in the U.S., but it certainly doesn’t seem to be a crazy theory that it would, even if you don’t think it worthy of discussion (I know: it’s your blog and you determine what is worthy of discussion, and I can start my own blog if I want to discuss that. However, I have no way of knowing if you knew that it was not actually crap before you posted your reply).
That wasn’t why it was crap. But I like the pre-emptive disclaimer.
Edit: I was informed that I was being a dick by not explaining why it was crap. Mom is the only identified bio parent; Cornejo is some random guy who has no connection, biologically or otherwise, to the child. Regardless of what mom contributed on her end, she’s all there is. Unfortunate, since there obviously is a dad out there somewhere, but irrelevant to Cornejo, since the one thing he is not is the father.
Even if mom paid half the $130k, does that mean some random guy owes the balance? Mom’s contribution, whether zero, $65K or $10M, is irrelevant to Cornego. He’s not a parent, biologically or otherwise, and just being male doesn’t turn him into the state’s, mom’s or the kid’s ATM.
“there is a need for finality in the law” I clearly understand the need for finality, no system will work if every decision is subject to continuous review. In industry we also seek finality but when overwhelming evidence of an error is found, we don’t let finality get in the way of protecting people.
This is a systemic failure of our legal system. The legal system continues to operate on the principal that if all procedures were followed correctly then no relief is warranted because the process was followed. Any system that is incapable of recognizing that the system itself can produce errors is in need of self correction. Failing to recognize and correct these issues is detrimental to the system as it reduces confidence in the process and makes a mockery of Justice.
This was Scalia’s argument that the Constitution doesn’t prohibit the execution of an innocent person as long as they were provided due process. It’s a rational position, but completely unsatisfying, especially when the result is the death of an innocent person.
Hurry up now, I guess there is, aggregation. I don’t get it.
I seriously doubt you fall through the boards.
Own the rot. Insects are easy
.
Just can’t do it can you…
https://youtu.be/AYYjgYea51w
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It’s just a bunch of cells, until we start talking 20 years of support payments, amirite? Dad makes 70K a year? Halleluja! it’s a miracle! Fraud? Pshaw! It’s a baby! Have you no soul?
White-Knighting for “poor single moms trying to get a Dead Beat Dad to help” is always a good campaign racket, as Senator Bradley shows: The Bradley amendment forbids judges from modifying the arrears in support orders. 1986, Public law 99-509, 42 U.S.C. § 666(a)(9)(c), another well intentioned law that doesn’t take into consideration that 1) women lie, 2) the states’ AGs have their own financial interest in screwing Dad, too.
The state of California allows a summons for a support hearing to be served via first class mail to whatever address mom gives for the alleged dad, even if he never lived at the address. Texas isn’t much better.
Family court makes college rape hearings and Civil Asset Forfeiture practices seem almost reasonable.
But if you were expecting fair and equitable from a court, you’re an idiot.
A little extreme. There is much wrong, but not all and not always.
This isn’t even the most egregious example. About 10 years ago in the Southwest, a man was being forced to pay child support for a nonexistent child. He kept protesting, no one would believe him. He even got a letter from the chief the state child support enforcement division saying, in effect, the child exists, you know it, shut up and pay up. It wasn’t until TV stations and newspapers got involved that a judge intervened and ordered the mother to produce the child in court. The mother was arrested outside the courthouse when she kidnapped a kid off the street to produce in court.
Way!
https://youtu.be/ptIcert_Ra8