You Ain't My Baby Daddy: The Problem of Paternity Fraud and Paternity Laws‪.‬

INTRODUCTION Men are trading in parental status for money and doing so with the permission of the courts. In R.A.C. v. P.J.S. (1) the New Jersey Superior Court allowed such behavior by construing the discovery rule to allow a victim of paternity fraud to pursue a claim for the reimbursement of child-rearing expenses against the biological father of the child. (2) The August, 2005, decision held that this statutory right--to sue the biological father for reimbursement of certain funds expended in the raising of the child--extended even to some expenditures after the child had reached the age of majority. (3) The facts of R.A.C. deviated from the majority of paternity disputes in that the child was thirty years old at the time of the proceedings and had been raised exclusively by the mother and R.A.C., who was not the biological father. (4) Rather than centering its decision on the family unit and the bond between father and son, the court focused on the fraud perpetuated by the mother and biological father and utilized equitable tolling to allow the putative father to bring suit thirty years after the birth of the son. (5) By construing statutes in ways that allow such results, courts effectively encourage men to question the paternity of their children and to seek remedies that will be harmful to the children.