DNA is changing not only the face but the torso and indeed the heart of divorce law in this country. Witness the case of Dennis Caron and Gina Manfresca of Ohio.
In 1989, when Manfresca told Caron she was pregnant with his child, he did the manly thing and married her. After three years of what may or may not have been marital bliss, she hinted he may not have been the child's biological father.Despite that, he'd formed emotional and certainly financial fatherly bonds with the boy, Tommy. He dutifully paid child support, even after the heavy-handed hint from the mother.
But later Caron demanded biological proof of paternity. A DNA test proved that he was not the dad of the boy, who was now 9 years old. After Manfresca cut off Caron's shared custodial visits, Caron went to court for the right to end his child support payments. A judge ordered him to continue paying child support even though visitation rights were cut off, conforming to a 500-year-old legal tradition that held any child born during a marriage was legally presumed to be the father's kin, whether it was in fact the father's biological child or not.
The Caron/Manfresca case might seem like a minor matter, but it's not. Genetic testing is completely rearranging the way child support is being handled across the nation. DNA-based paternity testing has more than tripled nationally in the past decade to about 250,000 cases in 1998. Father's rights groups are working to change laws in Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania and Michigan, with other states on target after the first four.
The Caron/Manfresca case is a lose-lose situation. The little boy has already lost. He has been given over to a parent who persuaded someone to marry her by telling him he caused her pregnancy, when there was at least the strong possibility that someone else was the more likely progenitor. She also had no right to accept his payments of child support under such fraudulent circumstances.
Tommy has also been cut off from the love of an apparently willing parent. He is being denied a stable, loving, permanent male role model.
Absent proof of physical or emotional abuse on the part of noncustodial parents, they should not be forced to make child support payments and at the same time be kept out of the child's life.
So what is the solution here? One doubts Solomon could resolve this in a way that could make all parties happy. Caron has been "ripped off," no doubt. But he should have a strong father-son relationship with Tommy, which he says he wants. Meanwhile, he also wants his ex-wife to reveal the true biological father, which she refuses to do and which stands in the way of their resolving their differences.
Therefore, Caron should drop that demand, because poor Tommy probably needs Caron's male influence and companionship and is, one can be sure, clueless as to why his "father" has suddenly fallen off the face of the Earth. King Solomon would probably order the parents to end their querulous ways, patch things up for the sake of the boy and get on with it. And so should the judge, rather than let this silly situation drag on and on and on while a 9-year-old needlessly suffers.
Bonnie Erbe, host of the PBS program "To the Contrary," writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe@CompuServe.com.