IN AMERICA, YOU CAN NOW BE A DEADBEAT DAD even if you’re not a dad at all. Matt Welch looks at a sweeping injustice that’s not getting nearly enough attention:

What Pierce didn’t realize, and what nearly 10 million American men have discovered to their chagrin since the welfare reform legislation of 1996, is that when the government accuses you of fathering a child, no matter how flimsy the evidence, you are one month away from having your life wrecked. . . .

So a name, race, vague location, and a broad age range is sufficient to launch a process that could quickly lead to a default judgment, asset liens, and a blocked passport? “Right. Right,” Gerhenzon confirms. “If it’s clear that she’s given us enough identifying information to come up with one discrete name, we would go ahead.” Wouldn’t that make people with unusual names easier targets? “Absolutely.” . . .

“When you tell people about the inequities of the system,” Wright says, “they’re surprised. They go, ‘This is America! You couldn’t do that!’ And I go, ‘Yes, you can.’”

Read the whole thing. Then write Congress.

UPDATE: A domestic-relations judge who asks that I not use his name emails:

Tell me about it. The words “due process of law” are wholly unknown to vast portions of the (administrative) child support network. I’m surprised it hasn’t been hugely publicized so far, and it’s not going to get better. Here in Ohio, the legislature’s attempt to enact a “paternity fraud” law is getting a hostile reception from the courts.

He’s right — and, indeed, the entire child-welfare bureaucracy seems actively hostile to due process considerations.