Man_and_baby  In 2004, Sam Lewis, a Tennessee factory worker, started making monthly child support payments for a 3-year-old child that his ex-girlfriend, Suzy Whitley, claimed was his even though she’d been living with another man during the period the child was conceived.

Regular visits and monthly child support payments of $317 plus an extra $50 retroactive support for the years he’d missed, Lewis soon developed a father son relationship with the little boy. But things just didn’t add up, and he got a DNA test, only to discover that his so called son wasn’t his and he’d been duped.

So you’d assume that the courts would straighten this mess out, especially as the woman admitted to knowing all along that her now 7-year-old son was not Lewis’s. Well, you’d be wrong. The Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled last week that Lewis could not seek reimbursement for payments already made ($9000), even though they acknowledge the child is not his and Whitley lied to extort money. To add salt to the wound, he will have to continue to pay back child support until all three years ($13, 314) are paid in full due to a legal loop hole. Why, because he willing signed a piece of paper stating he was the father.

Moral of the story: Always get a DNA test before you sign anything.

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Writer: Sarah L Hanson

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