Tyler Holden

[slacker]

Irregular News for 01.25.07

 

Australia -- A 79-year-old grandfather, a man who was impotent and a husband left with some explaining to do are the latest men falsely accused of being deadbeat dads.

 

The mistakes follow revelations in yesterday's Herald Sun that Victoria Legal Aid's Child Support Service had accused Tyler Holden, 15, of fathering a child in 1994 when he was just three.

 

Legal Aid's managing director, Tony Parsons, said on Monday that Tyler Holden's case was a "one-off".

 

But four more men, also named T. Holden, were accused of fathering the same child.

 

Yesterday, three of them and their families told of the distress caused by the bungling government agency's clumsy attempts to chase child support payments.

 

Mr Parsons admitted that a junior lawyer sent heavy-handed letters to five men.

 

The legal letters ordered the men to declare they were the child's father or send $550 for a DNA test to prove they weren't.

 

One of the men, Trevor Holden, said the threatening letter drove a wedge between him and his partner, Sue.

 

Trevor was away with their young children when the letter arrived, so Sue opened it.

 

She was so devastated she couldn't speak to him, instead confiding in her sister, who called the shocked man.

 

Trevor said the letter created a huge problem for his family.

 

He said a medical condition had made it impossible for him to father children in the early 90s.

 

"I was a hyperdialysis patient at the time and not everything was working until I had a transplant. But that was only eight years ago and this kid is 12," he said.

 

"Sue said, 'I want to know what is going on. I want to know the truth about what you have done'.

 

"She had second thoughts about me, and it was made worse because 20 years ago I used to go out with a girl of the same name as the mother."

 

Another Trevor Holden and his wife Dianne said their recent anniversary was ruined by doubts about his fidelity caused by the letter.

 

"After 25 years of marriage, it did not do us any good," the Mooroolbark man said. "I work out in the field a lot, so to make her believe me was pretty difficult."

 

A 79-year-old T. Holden got a letter, and his wife opened it. She said she never suspected her husband of infidelity.

 

"He is 79, so I knew it was not his child. But he was not very happy about it and I think it is absolutely disgusting," she said.

 

Four of the five men received apologies after yesterday's Herald Sun article, but Legal Aid has been unable to contact the fifth.

 

"It was a one-off in the sense that it was a one-off stuff-up by my organisation and this lawyer," Mr Parsons said.

 

"It involved five letters, but it is the only time it has happened in my time here."

 

The lawyer who sent the letters was being "counselled in the strongest possible terms" and the agency was reviewing its processes, Mr Parsons said.

 

He said in most cases a mother knows the name and address of the father and identification is not an issue.

 

Staff were trained to search phone books and electoral rolls when identity was in doubt, but never to call the person.

 

The agency also uses private investigators, but asks the mother to make the first contact to ensure they have the correct person.

 

"All of those things broke down," Mr Parsons said. "Just occasionally we have to send a letter when we are in some doubt. But we don't send the type of letter we sent to T. Holden."

 

source

[mbhusker13]

I had a similar thing happen to me. I was 19 and I had a one night stand with co-worker of my mothers. Some time later I get a threatening letter in the mail, it basically said if I didn't show up for the DNA test that they would automatically rule against me for child support. Of course back in '98' they didn't have the convienient methods thay have now. I had to wait for like six friggin' months to take the blood test. I remember walking into the Human services room. All of the ladies just glaring at me. they sat me down, and but a picture of the kid on the table next to me while they drew the blood. I thought to myself, "Bi@ch, I have been going over there and changing his diapers and sh*t for the last six months or so. I know what he looks like." It ended up being my friends kid. She apoloigized to me a year later, then to make matters worse her and the kid died in a house fire last year. Talk about a bad deal, and to top it all off my7 friend never took the DNA test, so he just paid the child support, and in the back of my mind I'm not even sure if it was his either.

 

P.S. I use birth control measures now.