Fullerton Father Loses Child Support Case

In a major family law decision, the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that parents--usually fathers--must pay accumulated child support to their minor children even if the other parent has hidden them for years.

The case, involving a Fullerton man, was watched closely by child support officials and fathers’ rights groups throughout the state and will affect thousands of parents who say it has been impossible for them to pay child support because they did not know where their children lived.

“This is Black Monday,” said John Nazarowski of the advocacy group United Fathers of America. “This is a cold day for children, because all this simply means is that [the court is] allowing a mother to go underground, conceal the children and get paid for it.”

In its decision, which overturns an appeals court decision that parents who hide their children lose the right to child support, the state Supreme Court emphasized that its ruling focused on the rights of children and not the relationship--no matter how unfair or unjust--between the parents.

The heart of the 30-page ruling said “the child’s need for sustenance must be the paramount consideration,” even “not withstanding the arguable unfairness from the noncustodial parent’s perspective of requiring [him] to continue making child support payments where the custodial parent has interfered with court-ordered custody or visitation rights.”

Previously, the state’s high court held that parents who conceal their children forfeit their right to child support, but the children in that case already were adults when their mother, who had hidden them, sought child support from the father.

In the Comer case, the two children of Gerald and Donna Comer are still minor and thus able to benefit from child support, the court said.

As a result of the ruling, released in San Francisco, Gerald Comer, a floor installer who lives in Fullerton, now owes about $32,000 in back child support accrued during the eight years his ex-wife concealed the children from him in Arizona.

Because she was on welfare, the bulk of the child support reimbursement sought from Gerald Comer will go to Gila County, Ariz., which has provided support. Although Donna Comer lives in Arizona, the case was brought by the Orange County district attorney and the state attorney general’s office because of Gerald Comer’s residence in Fullerton.

Until the ruling, it had been unclear whether either a parent or a government agency was entitled to seek reimbursement if concealment issues were involved.

Gerald Comer’s attorneys argued that his ex-wife had invalidated her right to child support by hiding the children and that Gila County, by stepping into her shoes when it provided welfare, had inherited rights that also were invalid.

The Supreme Court, however, decided that a child’s right to support endures regardless of the parents’ behavior and that “if the county furnishes support to the child, the county has the same right as the child to secure reimbursement and obtain continuing support.”

Gerald Comer, who earns about $20,000 a year and pays $371 a month in child support, said he cannot pay the thousands of dollars the court says he now owes.

“I don’t understand the system,” he said. “I mean, she left, she went into hiding. . . . This stinks, man, it’s just not right.

“I can’t afford those numbers,” Comer said.

Officials at the district attorney’s office, however, said the decision clarifies what had been a gap in California family law.

“This is going to have dramatic impact up and down the state,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven Hittleman said. “There are instances when a father is unable to locate the children for a limited period of time, from a number of months to a number of years, where the defense of concealment had been raised as a reason to reduce the amount of child support. Now that’s going to change.”