Man Who Is Not The Father Forced To Pay Child Support Or Go To Jail

Should Carnell Alexander be forced to pay the state of Michigan the $30,000 it claims he owes the state in welfare benefits paid to the mother of the child who put Alexander's name on the welfare

Carnell Alexander

application?

From WXYZ ABC Detroit :"A bizarre child support case in Michigan is demanding a Detroit man pay thousands of dollars or go to prison - even though everyone agrees the kid is not his.

"I feel like I'm standing in front of a brick wall with nowhere to go," said Carnell Alexander.

Alexander is forever haunted by the big news he got in 1991 during a traffic stop in Detroit.

"You're a deadbeat dad", the cop said. "You're a wanted man. You're coming with me."

"I knew I didn't have a child, so I was kind of blown back," Alexander said.

Alexander was arrested for failing to pay $60,000 in child support.

The state said he fathered a child in 1978 and had ignored a court order to pay up.

Alexander told the court it was the first he had heard of it.

"They told me it was too late to get a DNA test," Alexander said.

But he did anyway and the test proved he was not the dad. Still, a judge was unmoved.

"She told me that regardless of what the DNA says - because I didn't contact her 24 years ago, it's going to stick. Case closed. I got to pay for the baby," he said.

Records show Alexander ignored a court order of the paternity case in the late 1980s.

WXYZ TV ABC7 in Detroit pieced that chain of events together.

The state sent a process server to Alexander's dad's house. The process server was supposed to deliver to Alexander the summons. The process server then signed the summons saying that Alexander was delivered it, but refused to sign it.

"I wasn't there so I couldn't refuse to sign," Alexander said.

Records show Alexander had been arrested as a teenager and was locked up when the process server came to the house.

"I had no knowledge that I had a child support case pending against me," he said.

But there was a case because someone had put Alexander's name on an application for welfare benefits, an ex who was in a jam when her baby was born.

"I had to turn to welfare to get assistance to take care of them and had to put him down as the father. That was the only way I could get assistance," said Alexander's ex, who doesn't want to be identified. "Everything is my fault that I put him through."

"We know this is not my child so let's do what we need to do. What's right," Alexander said.

A few months ago a judge erased the debt that Alexander owed that mom of the kid that's not his, but not the debt owed to the state, $30,000 for welfare benefits paid over the years. He says he's going to keep fighting until all of the debt is erased."