Colorado Husband and Wife are divorcing.

Fifty-seven year old Husband is a retired Green Beret with twenty-one years of military service to his credit. He lives on his military pension.

In the divorce, Wife sought child support for her five year old son (Child).

The DNA of Husband and Child were tested to determine paternity.

The DNA test ruled Husband out as Child’s biological father.

Husband introduced that evidence in the divorce case.

And the Colorado divorce court held that Child was not Husband’s child and therefore Husband was not responsible for child support. The divorce decree states that there were no children of the marriage.

Despite that, Wife apparently somehow managed to get the United States Veterans Administration (VA) to garnish a substantial portion of Husband’s pension for child support.

Husband’s numerous phone calls AND submission of copies of the DNA test and divorce decree to the VA over a four month period did not deter the VA one bit though.

Finally, at his wit’s end, Husband contacted his local TV news station’s co-called Problem Solvers consumer watchdog team.

Luckily, the VA relented within a day of that.

This case is different from a far more common – and problematic – scenario where the presumed father doesn’t obtain a DNA test disproving his paternity until long after a court has already recognized him as the legal father of a child.

Here, Husband was on the ball and did everything exactly right.

The basis, if any, for the VA’s garnishment of Husband’s pension is not known.

But, by all accounts, Wife was clearly determined not to let the divorce court stand in the way of her collecting money from Husband.

Read more in

1. this KDVR TV 2 Fox 31 news article: Army veteran fights VA to stop child support payments for a boy who is not his
2. this KDVR TV 2 Fox 31 news article: VA stops vet’s forced child support payments for child that is not his and
3. this Task & Purpose news article: VA Forces Green Beret To Pay Child Support For Someone Else’s Kid

Husband and Wife are in a twenty year marriage. Wife seeks a divorce.

This is a contentious case. Nine years in the making.

Yes, you really did read that right and no, that isn’t a typo.

This is a complex case.

Husband is a shareholder in a family business (Company). A minority shareholder in a business founded by his father.

A profitable business. A business that had been known to pay Husband bonuses on the order of $250,000 per year before Wife filed for divorce.

But after Wife filed for divorce, there were some big changes at Company.

For starters, Company did a reverse stock split and bought back Husband’s stock. And once Husband was no longer an owner, Company discontinued Husband’s bonuses.

Wife argued that the discontinued bonuses should have been imputed to Husband anyway.

But the Illinois family trial court disagreed. Husband received fair market value for his stock. Husband’s father was left the sole owner of Company and thereafter received all of the profits.

Wife was unable to prove that the stock purchase was a sham and that the bonuses were later going to be paid to Husband. Or that Husband’s father or Company did anything improper.

So Wife’s award in the divorce turned out to be significantly less than she had expected.

Read more in this Expert Institute article: Economics Expert Evaluates Financial Obfuscation in Divorce Proceeding.

Sperm bank describes Sperm Donor as follows:

• holds PhD in neuroscience
• has IQ of 160

To numbers of would-be mothers seeking a sperm donor for their prospective children, Sperm Donor sounded pretty appealing.

So those would-be mothers signed on and gave birth to babies using Sperm Donor’s DNA.

Only, later on, those same mothers discovered Sperm Donor’s identity and that, far from possessing a PhD in neuroscience, Sperm Donor was not even a college graduate. Worse, Sperm Donor was a convicted felon … and diagnosed schizophrenic.

Finding the gap between the “advertising” and the reality extreme and distressing, the mothers sued the Georgia sperm bank they had turned to.

Their legal claims were expressed in the legal language of product liability, negligence, fraud, breach of warranty and commerical-type civil claims for money damages.

A Georgia trial judge rejected every single claim for damages though.

It’s not that the judge was condoning the sperm bank’s conduct. Hardly.

The problem is that the judge concluded that the monetary claims were in substance claims for ” wrongful birth” … claims not allowed in Georgia as a matter of public policy. Roses by another name, so to speak.

The trial judge did permit the mothers to press their nondamages claim for an order seeking additional information about the Sperm Donor from the sperm bank.

The judge also paved the way for the mothers to mount an expedited appeal of his ruling.

This case is one of roughly a dozen throughout North America brought by mothers in the same boat as these Georgia mothers.

Read more in this Atlanta Daily Report article: Judge Tosses All but One Claim in Sperm Bank Suit Over Donor’s Background.