Child Support Enforcement - Sarpy County Nebraska

guardian ad litem to represent the interest of the child. The filing party shall pay the costs of such
test. A court that sets aside a determination of paternity in accordance with this section shall
order completion of a new birth record and may order any other appropriate relief, including
setting aside an obligation to pay child support. No support order may be retroactively modified,
but may be modified with respect to any period during which there is a pending complaint for
relief from a determination of paternity under this section, but only from the date that notice of
the complaint was served on the nonfiling party. A court shall not grant relief from
determination of paternity if the individual named as father (1) completed a notarized
acknowledgment of paternity pursuant to section 43-1408.01, (2) adopted the child, or (3) knew
that the child was conceived through artificial insemination.
Source: Laws 2008, LB1014, § 47.
It remains to be seen how courts and litigants will apply this statute. The language is
permissive: Courts MAY set aside paternity judgments if the legal father steps through all the
right hoops, and is not listed on a notarized acknowledgment of paternity. Guardians ad litem
MUST be appointed first to represent the child‘s interests, and I suspect their findings and
recommendations to the court will be given deference.
Query: does the court consider what is in the ―best interests‖ of the minor child? What is
in the best interests? On one level, it would be clear that a child with two parents would stand in
better position financially than the same child with only one parent. This would include the right
to receive dependent social security benefits should the legally recognized father become
disabled or die during the children‘s minority. Also the child would have the right to inherit from
any estate of the father, and possible from his extended family. These are only the financial
benefits that could accrue to the child. I will leave it to others to discuss the emotional and
societal bonds and benefits the child would potentially receive from having a father. Clearly
society and the courts are concerned with other than a pure biological relationship between
child and father. Otherwise we would not allow adoptions or anonymous artificial insemination.
The Unicameral has opened a Pandora‘s Box with this legislation, in my opinion. A howitzer
has been sent in to swat a fly. I think it is clear that the law already afforded
adequate legal protections to men named in lawsuits to be biological parents.
You snooze, you lose. That seems no longer to be Nebraska law, however.
Cases pre-existing the passage of LB 1014 (Unicameral 2008)
include:
Day vs. Heller, 264 Neb. 934, 653 N.W.2d 475 (2002)
Facts: Wife became pregnant during marriage with child of boyfriend.
Wife held out pregnancy and child born to her as being husband’s child.
Parties divorced 4 years after birth of child. Husband was ordered to pay
child support and granted visitation. Eight years of child support payments
and visitations later ex-husband discovered that he was not biological
father of child. He was pissed, and sued.
Question Presented: Will Nebraska recognize a tort or assumpsit cause of
action against a mother for her misrepresentation and concealment of biological
fatherhood?
Holding: In effect, ex-husband is saying, ―He is not my son; I want my money
back.‖ ―[A] tort or assumpsit claim that seeks to . recover for the creation of a
parent-child relationship has the. effect of saying “I wish you had never been
born” to a child who, before the revelation of biological fatherhood, was under the
impression that he or she had a father who loved him or her.” “We decline to
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