Man faces jail time for back child support, child is not his

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A Detroit man turned himself in for not paying child support when the state demanded he pay for a child that was not his.

In the late eighties, Carnell Alexander’s ex-girlfriend was told that she needed to name a father on the paperwork for her child in order to receive welfare. She put Alexander’s name down, and the state contacted him to request child support payments.

DNA tests later proved that the child was not his, but that has not stopped the state from trying to collect.

According to the paperwork, Alexander was served notice of his paternal obligations at his house at the time, but the Michigan Department of Corrections says otherwise: Alexander was incarcerated at the time. He did not find out about the paternity charges until he was pulled over at a traffic stop and arrested for his dues.

A judge has put the case on hold until Attorney Cherika Harris, who volunteered to take the case pro-bono after seeing his story on the local news, can gather her argument.

Alexander is grateful to Harris but worries about other men who may be in the same situation. “We can be defaulted into being a father of a child that is not ours. I don’t understand the law, but we do have that law in place,“ said Alexander.