Today we have one of those happy ending stories that should never have been a story at all.
On Tuesday, a lawyer for Georgia resident Frank Hatley confirmed that her client had been cleared of the considerable child support payment debt that sent him to jail for a year. But here’s the weird part: he has no children.
Hatley’s tale dates back to 1986 when his then-girlfriend, Essie Lee Morrison, gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. The couple broke up shortly after the infant was born and two years later Morrison applied for public support for the then-toddler. Under Georgia law, the state can recoup the cost of the assistance from a child’s non-custodial parent, and Hatley assumed he was the boy’s father, so he signed a consent agreement with the Office of Child Support Services and dutifully made payments to the state.
However, in 2000 Hatley got a tip that he might not be the boy’s father after all. A DNA test proved the tip true. Hatley returned to court with this news — news which would presumably absolve him of all debt. But for reasons that baffle the mind he was ordered to pay more than $16,000 the state said he owed before the ruling. He managed to scrape up $6,000, but after he lost his job in 2006 he didn’t exactly have a lot of cash to spare, so a judge threw him in jail for six months for not making his payments. He made payments again once he got out, but when luck did not go his way again, and he became homeless in 2008, a judge ordered him to spend a year in jail. He was released last month.
While behind bars he connected with the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, which finally convinced the state to clear his debt last month.
“We’re satisfied with the result for Mr. Hatley, but still troubled by the state’s monumental lapse of judgment in this case,” attorney Sarah Geraghty told CNN.
That maybe the understatement of the year.
Photo courtesy of foxumon via stock.xchang
