John Washington III Calls Georgia's Child Support System 'a Racket' and Demands Reform
In a statement Sunday night, John Washington III argued that Georgia can require an unmarried father to pay child support while giving him no automatic right to seek custody or visitation - a second legal process, called legitimation, stands in between. 'Fatherhood should not be determined by a marriage license,' he wrote.
John Washington III, the San Antonio-based presidential candidate, turned his attention to Georgia family law on Sunday night, calling the state's child support system 'a racket' and a case of government overreach in a written statement. His subject was a gap he said his research had turned up: under Georgia law, a man who has a child with a woman he is not married to can be legally required to pay child support, but that obligation does not automatically give him the legal right to custody or visitation with his own child.
The mechanism he pointed to is a separate proceeding called legitimation. Even if a father signs the birth certificate, even if DNA proves he is the biological father, and even if he is paying child support, John Washington III wrote, he generally must complete that additional process before he can seek enforceable custody or visitation rights. 'The government can recognize you as a father when it's time to collect child support, but when it comes to having legal rights to raise your own child, suddenly you're required to go through another government process,' he wrote. 'I call that a racket.'
He was careful, in the same statement, about what he was not arguing. He said fathers should financially support their children; he said the issue is not taking rights away from mothers but recognizing both parents in a child's life; and he said courts keep a responsibility to protect children from abuse and dangerous situations - his objection is that being unmarried, by itself, puts a father at a legal disadvantage. 'Fatherhood should not be determined by a marriage license,' he wrote.
Georgia, he argued, is one example of a national pattern worth examining. 'We have allowed government to become so involved in our personal and family lives that people are forced to navigate expensive legal processes just to exercise responsibilities and pursue rights that should go hand in hand,' he wrote, calling for reform that respects both parents, protects children, and stops treating unmarried fathers as financial providers first and parents second. He closed the statement the way he opened it - in capital letters: 'It's time to change these laws and put the people's rights first.'
