Legitimation Station helps Columbus fathers gain equal rights to their children

Ruggero Davis signed his name to his son's birth certificate. He provides financial support and sees the 5-year-old boy practically every day, he said during a recent Ledger-Enquirer interview.

Yet, in the state of Georgia, the 27-year-old father has no legal rights to custody or visitation as a non-custodial parent. So last month, he began filling out paperwork to file a legal petition through a program called the Legitimation Station. It helps fathers become more involved in their children's lives.

"I just want equal rights to my son," he said while seeking legal counsel through the program located at the Law Library inside the Government Center.

Under Georgia law, non-custodial fathers such as Davis have no inherent parental rights if the children's parents were never married. To secure such rights, they have to go through a legal process to legitimize the child through the courts. It doesn't matter if the father's name is on the birth certificate or he's already paying child support.

Carol Wade, a Muscogee County librarian, said that's why there is a need for the Legitimation Station, which was created four years ago by local judges, attorneys and court personnel to help more fathers legitimize their children.

Lauren Mescon, an attorney and former family judge, approached then-Chief Superior Court Judge John Allen with the idea, and he agreed to launch the program, Wade said. Muscogee County Probate Court Judge Marc D'Antonio, at the time a Legal Aid lawyer, was also involved in getting it started. Since then, the program has helped more than 500 fathers.

The Legitimation Station is open at the Law Library the first, second and third Fridays of every month from 10 a.m. to noon. It is designed to help non-custodial fathers develop a legal relationship with their children, parenting plans and a sense of responsibility for the rearing of their children. Only a child's biological father can file a petition for legitimation and the document has to be filed in the county where the mother resides. Fathers who participate in the program receive free legal counsel from pro bono lawyers and intern paralegals from Columbus Technical College. However, they are required to sign a document acknowledging that the lawyers do not represent them.

"They will not go to court with them," Wade said. "They're just giving free legal advice, and they're trying to get them ready to go to court."

Many of the men who come to the Legitimation Station have complicated situations where the mothers are uncooperative or incarcerated. In some cases, the children are up for adoption and the fathers are left out of the decision.

"They really don't realize that they don't have any rights to the child until they go through this legitimation (process)," Wade said. "So the attorney tries to go through any problems that they might have and then the paralegals take it from there and fill out the paperwork so they will be ready to file their legitimation with the Clerk of Superior Court."

Access to justice

Last month, Michael Camp II showed up to get help submitting a petition to legitimize his 7-year-old daughter. He said he dated the girl's mother for about 2½ months then found out she had another boyfriend. He said he knew she was pregnant with his child and agreed to sign the birth certificate. But when the child was born, the mother had the other man sign it.

Camp said the woman's boyfriend had a DNA test a year later and found out the baby wasn't his. A few months later, Camp said, he was contacted by his ex-girlfriend's mother who asked him if he wanted to meet his daughter. He agreed to do so and began spending time with the child.

"That went on for a little while," he said. "Everything was good as long as money was flowing and things of that nature. And as soon as I would ask to get legitimized or anything like that, then I would be cut off from visitation and wouldn't be able to see my kid. There was a point of time where I went eight months without seeing my daughter."

He said his ex-girlfriend was arrested for seven felony drug charges about two years ago, and her mother now has custody of her two children. He said the ex-girlfriend currently lives in upstate New York and he has been helping her mother with the girls, one of them not his biological child. He said the grandmother supports his petition for legitimation and he has documents with her signature.

Helping Camp with his paperwork was D'Antonio, who filled in for Mescon at the Legitimation Station. He was assisted by Chance Hardy, a private attorney, and Tahira Menedez, Danielle Lanier and Ryan Wright, all Columbus Tech paralegal students.

D'Antonio said he was the program's first coordinator and believes it is important to the community.

"Access to justice is a very important thing to me. My entire career, that's what I've done," he said. "This was an avenue to help more folks gain access to justice. It's in the child's best interest to have both parents involved unless there's family violence or other things like that."

Once the documents are filed, Wade said, Camp will receive a date for a court hearing, where he will go before a Superior Court judge. The mother can consent to legitimation or challenge it. She also has the right to be present during the court proceedings.

"If a DNA test is needed, the judge will go ahead and order a DNA test," Wade said. "Then they have the hearing. And if he is the father and he's a fit father who is in the best interest of the child, the judge orders visitation and or custody."

Sometimes mothers go before the judge to argue that legitimation would be harmful to the child. Mothers can also file answers to the petitions online when they're summoned to court, Wade said.

"But we also have a lot of mothers who come in with the father and it goes really smoothly when both parents agree," she said. "And that happens a good bit."

Davis and his mother, Regina, said they came to the Legitimation Station to seek joint custody of his 5-year-old son. They said they were surprised to learn that he had no legal rights after signing the birth certificate and supporting him for five years outside of the legal system.

Regina Davis said she has another son in the same situation, but the mother moved out of town with the child so he could not file for legitimation. She said Davis and his son's mother get along well, but he's always at a disadvantage when it comes to parenting.

"It's just that if she gets upset about anything, she let's him know that he doesn't have the same rights," Regina Davis said. "We just want him to have the same rights as the mother."

She said they hope to get cooperation from the child's mother before officially filing the paperwork and volunteers at Legitimation Station have been helpful.

"A lot of things they told us we didn't know," she said. "We figured once he signed the birth certificate, he was legitimized. They said he's legitimate, but in the state of Georgia that still does not count. So Georgia needs to do something about that law because it's not fair that you've got a father taking care of his child and doing his best as a father and he doesn't have the same rights as the mother because he isn't married to her."

Searching for funding

Chief Superior Court Judge Gil McBride said he has been involved in legitimation cases since he was in private practice and Judge Allen asked him to continue with the program when he replaced him. He said Georgia law reflects "the conventions, the assumptions and the legal presumptions of the common law, which means when a child is born out of wedlock the mother has all rights, title, and interest in and to the child until the father is legitimate.

"The mother controls whether the child gets a haircut or where he goes to school or if he gets braces," McBride said. "And the father, really in the absence of legitimation, has no rights at all."

He said the number of children born out of wedlock in Muscogee County is now about 52 percent, and it's important that mothers and fathers be educated on the need to formalize the father's relationship to the child. He believes it could help prevent crime and other societal problems.

"It's generally better for children to have both a mother and a father in their lives," McBride said. "You've got about a century's worth of research to back that up. Children who have a father in their lives are less likely to be incarcerated. They're more likely to graduate from high school. They're less likely to have contact with the juvenile justice system."

He said the program is run by all volunteers and Mescon has been the volunteer coordinator. But she is moving to Amsterdam with her husband, retiring Columbus State University President Tim Mescon, and will have to be replaced. McBride said he would like to secure funding to fill the position with a paid, part-time coordinator who can keep the program going.

He has already approached the Columbus Bar Association and the Office of Dispute Resolution for help and expects to get some support through those avenues, he said.

"But it seems to me that the most logical place to have a reliable, continuing, ongoing source of funding to pay for a coordinator would be the (city's) Office of Crime Prevention because of the very strong correlations that we see between criminality and the lack of presence of a father," he said. "I would think of this as being the original crime prevention program."

McBride said it would cost about $1,000 to $1,500 a month to fund the position and he plans to discuss the matter with Mayor Teresa Tomlinson, Crime Prevention Director Seth Brown and other city officials.

Wright, one of the paralegals from Columbus Tech, said more people in the community need to be educated about the subject. She sees many fathers like Davis and lets them know that under Georgia law they're just "sperm-donors" if they don't legitimize. She said they may be supporting the children independent of the court system, but it's just considered a gift.

Wright said some fathers want to legitimize, but they don't want to get caught up in the legal system. Others don't come to the courts because they have financial issues and can't afford to support their children. And many are just unaware that it's required.

She said most fathers end up in the legitimation program when they have no place else to turn.

"They're fed up. They're lost and they have nothing else to do," she said. "When you can't pick up the phone and speak to your daughter, when you're thinking about your daughter every day and can't even see her, that's sad."

Alva James-Johnson, 706-571-8521. Reach her on Facebook at AlvaJamesJohnsonLedger.

This story was originally published December 13, 2014 at 9:15 PM with the headline "Legitimation Station helps Columbus fathers gain equal rights to their children."