My husband, D, and I met in December 2003 and were married on November 12, 2007. We are blessed with good health and loving family and friends. I never had children - My husband's son is 22, engaged and on a great path in life. Not a day goes by that D and I don't express gratitude for our life together.
Over the years we've had our bumps in the road, but non has been such a bombshell as the news I received last Friday, January 20, 2012. I was in the middle of collecting all of our tax information and was on the phone with Blue Cross/Blue Shield to figure out the amount of our co-pays for 2011. The woman I spoke with, Amanda, was very nice and said she would send me an email with the figures but "For the future do you know that you can obtain this information from our website?" I didn't know I was able to do that and asked her where I should look. She gave me the website info and I proceeded to log on. It took me only a few minutes of maneuvering around the website to see that there was a person's name listed on our health insurance that I was unfamiliar with. My heart started racing - the first thing I thought was 'insurance fraud.' I called BCBS back immediately and got a gentleman on the phone.
The customer service representative started looking through the records - "I see that this person has been receiving benefits for a while ... 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008...." He said he would start a fraud investigation. I had the gentleman on speakerphone as he was taking down all of my information to start the investigation and my husband walked in the door from work. I said aloud "Honey, do you know anyone named C C?" He looked at me, looked at the phone and said "Who are you talking to?" "Blue Cross/Blue Shield," I replied. "Hang up the phone and sit down," my husband said. My mouth dropped open and I looked down at the phone in my hands. "Uh, uh, uh..." I stuttered. The BCBS rep, who had heard everything as it was unfolding, said "I'll just put this on hold until you call me back." "OK," I said in almost a whisper.
And that's the beginning of this journey.
D served in the Air Force for 13 years, he now works for the federal government. He made his transition from the AF to the gov't while he was living in Oklahoma. Around the same time he and his wife went through a divorce and he rented an apartment in Oklahoma City. It was while he was living in this apartment that he says he met Woman X in a bar and had a short relationship with her. He gives the impression they dated for less than a month. D said that Woman X said she was dating several different people and had a boyfriend as well. He said that during that time he also met Woman X's girl friend who worked for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.
After the 30 days or so that D and Woman X dated they never spoke again. Ever.
When the lease was up in Oklahoma D moved in with a friend in the area. He was looking to take a job in a larger city and knew it was only a matter of time so he didn't want to enter into another lease. He took a job in NY in the late summer/early fall of 2003. For his first six months in NY he lived in four different places. It was also during this time that the friend of Woman X (the one who works for DHS) called D and told him that Woman X had a baby and it was his. She said that they had a paternity hearing and, since he didn't show up, D has been court ordered to pay child support.
D had a vasectomy prior to meeting Woman X. D claims that the child is not his. D claims that he never received timely notice of the hearing. He said that he only received the notice weeks after he got the phone call and the court date had past.. He claims that he was singled out and scammed by Woman X and her friend. They knew he had a government job and the friend, because she worked for DHS, knew the best course of action to take in order to make D legally responsible for the child. She may have even illegally manipulated the circumstances. There was never a paternity test.
In late 2003-early 2004 D hired an attorney to try and fight the paternity decision. The attorney advised that he'd have to find a 'sympathetic judge' to listen to the case. In the end the attorney told D that there was nothing he could do. My husband accepted this fate and has been paying child support ever since.
D says he never told me about this for a few reasons: he was embarrassed, he was ashamed, he didn't want me to deal with his baggage, he didn't want to risk losing me, he wanted to protect me from the whole situation.
Over the last 5 days I've gone through a whole range of emotion. Anger, betrayal, hurt, disgust, despair and much sadness. I didn't sleep a wink for the first three nights.
The emotional mess has finally subsided. Now I have resolved to dig as far as necessary to get to the bottom of this situation. To seek the truth. It is something my husband has long wanted to do but couldn't without my knowledge.
I'm writing about this so that I may document every action - I am guessing we will need a bit of this information in court at some point. I'm putting it in the public blogesphere for two reasons: 1. To serve as a source of information for anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation and want to challenge paternity - especially many years after the child's birth (the child was born on 4/23/2003 and today is 2/1/2012) and 2. I know that I will need much help on this journey. By sending this out on the internet I have the opportunity to receive comments and ideas. Thank you in advance for any ideas you may share.
With Gratitude -dsm
