Mother Lies To Court About Child’s Paternity In Parker V. Parker

In the case of Parker v. Parker, husband and wife were married in 1996. About two years later, a child was born to the marriage. The couple filed for divorce in 2001. During the proceeding, the wife represented to the court as well as her husband that Richard Parker was the father of the child. In 2001, a final judgment was entered, dissolving the marriage. The judgment required the father to pay child support.

In 2003, Margaret Parker filed a motion for contempt and petition to enforce child support against her husband. In response, the husband presented a DNA test to the court that showed that he was not the father of the child. Later that year, the husband filed an independent civil action against his former wife claiming fraud and seeking compensatory damages for past and future child support obligations. The trial court dismissed this petition with prejudice. The husband appealed to the Fourth District which treated the claim as a motion for relief from the dissolution of marriage final order pursuant to Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.540(b). This meant his petition for relief was time-barred based on a 1-year statute of limitations.

The Fourth District ruled that the wife’s fraud was a form of intrinsic fraud or fraud upon a person. It was not extrinsic fraud or fraud upon the court. However, this decision conflicted with a previous proceeding in the case of M.A.F. v. G.L.K. In that case, the appeals court had ruled that lying about paternity to your husband was extrinsic fraud upon the court. In that case, the First District Court of Appeals held that:

When a wife knows that her husband is not the father of her children, and the husband does not know, concealment of that knowledge in a divorce proceeding involving child support is extrinsic fraud upon the court. The husband’s petition was not barred by the doctrine of res judicata or the one year limitation of actions provision of Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.540(b).

Extrinsic versus intrinsic fraud in marital dissolution proceedings 

Ultimately, this case did not go the husband’s way and it boiled down to whether or not the wife committed intrinsic or extrinsic fraud when misrepresenting the husband’s paternity. The Fourth District considered the petitioner’s action as a motion to vacate the final judgment dissolving the marriage and establishing paternity under rule 1.540(b). In another case, D.F. v. Dep’t of Revenue ex rel. L.F 823 So.2d 97. In D.F., the court recognized that because a determination of child support in a final dissolution of marriage order is deemed a final determination of paternity, re-litigation of paternity is barred by res judicata, meaning that the matter was already settled.

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Source:

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