Carnell Alexander: Child Support for a Child That Wasn’t His

The Carnell Alexander child support case is the 26-year ordeal of a Detroit man who was declared the legal father of a child he had never fathered, based on a process server’s forged 1989 affidavit claiming service at a time when Alexander was in a Michigan state prison. Wayne County enforced the resulting support order against him for decades, garnishing an estimated $33,000 and securing a 2012 felony nonsupport conviction, before finally dismissing the case in early December 2016. None of the money was returned.

How the Case Began

The child at the center of the case was born in 1987. An ex-girlfriend of Alexander’s listed his name as the father on a welfare benefits application to obtain government assistance. Alexander, incarcerated at the time, had no knowledge that his name had been used.¹

In 1989, a process server filed a sworn affidavit stating that he had personally handed Alexander a child support summons at Alexander’s father’s former home in Highland Park, Michigan, and that Alexander had refused the paperwork. State prison records showed Alexander was behind bars on the date the process server claimed to have made face-to-face contact. The affidavit was false.²

Due process requires that a defendant be properly notified of a lawsuit before judgment is entered. The judge in Alexander’s case relied on the fraudulent proof of service as evidence that this requirement had been met, and when Alexander did not appear, entered a default judgment declaring him the child’s legal father.²

How Alexander Found Out, and What It Cost Him

Alexander did not learn about any of this until the early 1990s, when a police officer stopped him in traffic and told him there was an outstanding warrant for unpaid child support. That was his first notice that the state considered him a father.¹

Starting in the early 2000s, the Wayne County Friend of the Court began seizing money from Alexander’s paychecks and bank accounts. The garnishments eventually totaled an estimated $33,000. Alexander, who had an eighth-grade education and limited income, repeatedly told the court and Friend of the Court staff that he was not the father, but he could not afford the lawyer or file the specific motions the system required.³

In 2012, the consequences escalated: Alexander was convicted of a felony for failing to pay the court-ordered support.²

DNA Evidence and the 2015 Ruling

Alexander eventually located the child’s mother and arranged a DNA test through Universal Forensics. The result was unambiguous. The probability of paternity was 0.00%.²

A judge used that evidence to dismiss the 2012 felony nonsupport conviction and released Alexander from probation three years early. The underlying debt was treated separately. In February 2015, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen McCarthy ruled that Alexander still owed roughly $30,000 in back support. She cited Michigan’s statutory deadlines for challenging paternity, which require a motion to set aside an acknowledgment of parentage within three years of the child’s birth or one year after the order of filiation. Alexander, she said, “failed to take this matter seriously” over “two and a half decades.”⁴

McCarthy also said she was “outraged at the media for the willful misrepresentations of the facts.”³

Because the debt was owed to the state of Michigan as reimbursement for welfare benefits paid to the mother, rather than to the mother personally, the state had a direct financial interest in keeping the obligation on the books.⁵

The 2016 Dismissal

Attorney Cherika Harris took on Alexander’s case and filed a lawsuit arguing that garnishing his wages and labeling him a “deadbeat” amounted to an “illegal taking” and a violation of his constitutional rights. As that case moved forward, Wayne County dismissed the child support matter. In early December 2016, Alexander received official notice that the debt had been lifted and he no longer owed support for the child.¹

The fight had taken 26 years. None of the roughly $33,000 taken from him was returned.²

“Today I am happy that the debt has been lifted,” Alexander said, “but I am still hurt by what I have been through over 26 years.”¹

Why Michigan Law Kept the Debt Alive for So Long

Two legal rules explain why DNA alone did not end the case, and why no refund followed.

Michigan’s Paternity Deadlines

The Michigan Revocation of Paternity Act allows courts to set aside paternity determinations only under narrow conditions. A petition generally must be filed within three years of the child’s birth or one year after the order of filiation, and the petitioner must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the acknowledged parent is not the father. Even then, a court can refuse to vacate the order if doing so would not serve the child’s best interests.⁶ In Alexander’s case, both deadlines had expired long before he knew the paternity claim existed, which is the ground Judge McCarthy relied on in 2015.

The Federal Bradley Amendment

The federal Bradley Amendment, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 666(a)(9), prohibits states from retroactively modifying child support arrearages. Each overdue payment becomes a judgment by operation of law the moment it comes due, and cannot be reduced or forgiven afterward.⁷ Even where a man is later disestablished as a father, arrears that built up before the disestablishment usually survive. A handful of states have found narrow workarounds; Alaska lets its administrative agency extinguish arrears upon disestablishment, and Maryland courts have in rare cases voided the original paternity judgment as invalid from inception. Most states treat the accumulated debt as permanent.⁸

What Changed After Alexander’s Case

In June 2017, Alexander and two other men who called themselves “dads by default” walked from Detroit to Lansing over three days to draw attention to forged proof-of-service documents. The walk caught the attention of then-state Representative Jim Runestad, who introduced legislation to raise penalties for lying on proof-of-service filings. The bill stalled.²

It gained traction again in April 2021, after three Oakland County attorneys from the Fishman Group were indicted on racketeering, forgery, and obstruction of justice charges for allegedly forging proof-of-service documents in debt collection cases. Prosecutors said the scheme affected at least 1,000 people and produced more than $1 million in improper default judgments against defendants who never knew they had been sued.⁹

Runestad reintroduced the measure as Senate Bill 244. Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed it into law on March 23, 2022, as Public Act 36 of 2022. The law requires process servers to sign a declaration that the proof of service is true under penalty of perjury, replacing the previous notary requirement.¹⁰

Michigan’s paternity-challenge deadlines and the federal rule against modifying arrears were not changed by that law. A Michigan defendant who, like Alexander, discovers years later that a default paternity judgment was built on a forged affidavit still faces the same two obstacles he did.

1
WXYZ Detroit. Court Finally Stops Trying to Make Detroit Man Pay Child Support for Child That Isn’t His
2
Detroit Free Press. Process Server Error: Carnell Alexander Child Support
3
Reason. Judge Outraged at Innocent Man, Orders Him to Pay
4
ABA Journal. In Jail When Served in Child Support Case, Man Isn’t the Dad DNA Test Says
5
Snopes. Child Extort
6
Michigan Courts. Setting Aside an Acknowledgment of Parentage
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S.C. § 666 – Requirement of Statutorily Prescribed Procedures
8
CLASP. Child Support Arrearages and Retroactive Modification
9
Detroit Free Press. Oakland Lawyers Charged With Skirting Laws in Debt Collection Scheme
10
Senator Jim Runestad. Sen. Runestad’s Bill to Curb Fraud, Corruption in the Judicial System Signed Into Law