Man owes $67K in child support but he’s not father

A man in Texas is fighting a court order to pay tens of thousands of dollars in child support to his former girlfriend — despite a DNA test proving the woman’s teenage child is not his daughter.

Gabriel Eduardo Cornejo, a husband and father, claims he learned last year that his former girlfriend had a daughter in 1999. Since 2001, the woman has been pursuing him in Texas’ Harris County court for child support. He says he was unaware of the child until last summer, when a court summons arrived warning him that he could be arrested if he failed to respond.

He met t he t eenager last year. “Wonderful girl,” he told ABC News. “Very smart.” A DNA test, however, showed that he wasn’t her father.

Cornejo is still obligated to pay because of a chapter in the Texas Family Code that states that a negative paternity test only ends his obligation for future child support payments.

That means he is still responsible for child support payments that have been piling up since 2003, when a Texas court decided — in his absence — that he was “the biological father.” But Cornejo is now arguing that he never received a citation informing him about the case.

A court exhibit filed in June 2016 lists the outstanding support payments at $67,000 (US$53,800).

“Don’t you think that’s odd, that no one has sent him a letter?” Cornejo’s lawyer, Cheryl Coleman, said in an interview Wednesday.

“When he walked into my office and he said, ‘I had not been served,’ I had trouble believing that story — until I looked into the Harris County records.” She initially couldn’t find any proof that Cornejo had been served with documents notifying him he had been sued for child support.

This year, Coleman said, the court eventually found a citation that showed, in May 2002, an officer “or authorized person” attested that they had delivered documents to Cornejo. Peculiarly, Coleman said, the court continued to attempt to serve him with documents, even though he had supposedly already been served.

Them other’ s lawyer, Care lS ti th, told ABC that the court garnished Cornejo’s wages without any complaint. The court record does show several “withhold income for child support” orders in 2003. The record also shows another case from 2008, where Cornejo’s employer was ordered to withhold a portion of his wages for support payments for a son.

Coleman said she had no knowledge of the other case.

HE WALKED IN AND SAID ‘I HAD NOT BEEN SERVED’