Noble Court Decisions: Opposed to Common Sense?

Court reverses child support damages decision?

A Victorian court has reversed a decision, which awarded damages to a man who paid child support for two children that a paternity test revealed were not his?

In 2002 the County Court ordered the wife of 52-year-old Liam Magill pay him $70,000 for general damages and economic loss for child support he paid for two children he did not father.

It found the law of deceit applied because Mr Magill was falsely led to believe he was the father of the woman's two younger children.

A noble cause and not common sense?

What noble cause you might ask? To close the flood-gates of litigation regardless of any loss suffered by the applicant who made the claim!

After the fact!

The court heard Meredith Magill had been having an affair when her second and third children were conceived.

Today the Victorian Supreme Court upheld her appeal against damages?

Justice Jeffrey Eames found Mrs Magill did not wholly set out to deceive her husband despite an admission she suspected one of the children might not be his when she nominated him as the father on an application for child support?

How do you work that out the man was deceived and raised two children that were not his? Allegedly his wife had no knowledge and it was not her intention?

But Mrs Magill did wholly have an affair, fell pregnant and had the babies, then expected another man who happened to be her husband to pay for them. How is that not fraud, deception and lies?

A conservative court no doubt!

Because it would leave the gate open for every other person to claim the same if it were to happen to them.

What about a refund?

But the agency that collects the alimony for all the other children of divorced parents would expect all the fathers to pay for the children they believed were of the marriage until they found out.

It makes me wonder if they'll get a refund off the agency who payed the mother his hard earned savings because it seems clear that once they've paid it out according to this precedent they don't get a refund off the mother?

My advice is to have a DNA test done after every child is born to ensure that you're paying for your own child and not someone else's.

By Conservative Court 17 March 05