Man Fights $30K Support Order For Child He’s Never Met – DNA Test Showed He’s Not The Father

A Detroit man says he owes back child support for a child that a DNA test proved isn’t even his. That’s not that unusual of a story, because paternity can be established legally a few ways. There’s more to this story though, that is astounding the public: Not only did a DNA test prove that Carnell Alexander is not the father of the child that the State of Michigan is requiring him to pay back child support for, he says he has never even met the child and was not married to the mother.

The child Carnell Alexander has been ordered to pay back child support for was born in 1987. Everyone agrees that the child isn’t his. He discovered that he was considered a father at a traffic stop in the early 90’s according to WXYZ News. Alexander told WXYZ News that the officer called him a deadbeat dad.

“I knew I didn’t have a child, so I was kind of blown back,” Alexander explained.

The court told Alexander that it was too late for the court to order a DNA test, he said. Alexander said that when he first discovered that the State of Michigan was ordering that he pay back child support, he didn’t even know where the mother of the child was or how to find her. Alexander said he tried explaining the situation to the court, but no one would help him. He said that Friend of the Court employees weren’t legally allowed to give him advice on the issue, and that he didn’t understand at the time what kind of formal steps would need to be taken to rectify the problem.

He said that one day, simply by chance, he ran into someone who was able to help him get in contact with the mother of the child that was said to be his. The woman said she knew he wasn’t the child’s father. A DNA test was arranged between the two and Alexander was right. He was not the father of the child that he was ordered to pay back child support for. In an odd twist, the actual father of the child was actually in the child’s life.

Armed with a DNA test and the mother’s acknowledgement that the child was not his, he approached the court again, but the judge would not free him of his support order.

“Case closed. I gotta pay for the baby,” Alexander remembered.

The reason why it was too late for a DNA test is because in the late 1980’s, the State of Michigan sent a process server to Alexander’s father’s house to deliver a summons. The process server’s documentation said that the summons was refused, but Alexander said he didn’t refuse. He says he wasn’t there. When WXYZ News checked the process server’s documents, Alexander’s story was accurate. He couldn’t have refused the summons at the Highland Park home because he was serving time in prison at the time.

Even the child’s mother said that she named Alexander as the father only on an application for state assistance decades ago after a caseworker said that she was required to fill in the spot for the name of the child’s father. She says that she feels awful and that she had no idea anything would become of filling in the wrong name on an application for welfare. After learning what Alexander was going through, she went to the court and tried to explain. She asked the court to forgive his back child support. They forgave her portion of the tab, but because the child received state assistance they still wanted their share of the child support, according to the Daily Mail.

A Friend of the Court representative said that when situations like these arise, the court suggests that people immediately hire a lawyer. With only an eighth grade education, he didn’t have the resources to find and hire counsel at that time, he explained. Now, Alex faces jail time if he doesn’t pay the back child support. Alexander owes the State of Michigan $30,000 in back child support for a child that he did not know, did not know of, and, according to a DNA test, did not father.

[Photo via WXYZ video interview]