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On this Father's Day, men across the state continue to pay support for children they never sired. They're trapped by centuries-old law that's been buttressed by recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings: Even if they prove they're not the biological father, they're still charged with paying support.

Pennsylvania common law says that unless a husband can prove he was sterile, impotent or away from his wife during the conception of a child, he's the father. For children born out of wedlock, a man can be declared the legal father if he signs an affidavit claiming paternity or if he fails to challenge a summary judgment naming him the dad. Even if he returns later with a genetic test proving he isn't the real father, once a man surrenders his right to contest the issue, he remains legally the father.

More than a dozen states have scrapped similar laws over the past decade. But in the Keystone State, if the genes don't fit, they still don't acquit. Child advocates insist the Pennsylvania model best protects children — especially those who grew up with men they thought were their real fathers — by binding men to years of support payments. Critics, however, say it rewards mothers for lying and penalizes men for being victims of adultery or paternity fraud.

"To put it bluntly, it's all a fraud," said John Sims, director of the nonprofit Fathers Raising Children Project of Pittsburgh. "The courts and the welfare system know it's not fair, but today, in 2002, a genetic test doesn't mean much for most guys, and if they're poor, they're hurt the most.

"Look at it this way: To go on welfare, a woman has to give them the name of the child's father. She says 'XYZ' is the dad, whether he is or not. If the guy doesn't show up for the initial custody or support hearing, he's declared the father by the judge. If the lady tells him he's the father, and he believes her and signs something saying he is the father, then he's caught there. If he marries her, believing the child is his, then he's stuck, too.

"But the child might not be his. In Pennsylvania, that doesn't matter."

A 1999 survey by the American Association of Blood Banks, which certifies genetic testing labs nationwide, found that about a third of American paternity scans reveal a man wasn't the biological father of his children. About 1.5 million tests are performed annually — a number that's growing because more than a dozen states now let men stop paying child support after refuting their paternity.

In May, Georgia became the latest state to enact a genetic escape clause for child-support payments. California's Senate is debating a similar bill, and other measures are percolating in the Massachusetts, Michigan and Vermont legislatures. Four bills circulating in Harrisburg in 1999-2000 never became law. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee began reviewing a bill that would allow divorced men to exempt themselves from support payments if they're not the real father and the child is younger than 5.

The proposed Vermont statute is the most stringent, making it a felony for a woman to lie about the child's paternity to obtain support. It lets men use paternity test results in court for 25 years after the birth of a child.

"We used to live under the assumption that the mother knew the father, and who she said was the father was the father," said Vermont Rep. Leo Valliere, a Republican. "But that's not always true, and too often it's fraud. I see two victims: the alleged father and the child. It's a theft of the worst kind. It's an identity theft. I feel sorry for both the child and the dad, and I think the mother should have to answer for that."

If estimates are right, 500,000 American men find out every year that they're not really fathers. And more — especially poor and minority men — would learn that same fact if they had the money or wherewithal for a test.

Most tests no longer involve blood. A cotton swab dragged across the mouth is the preferred method today, but blood, sperm and even amniocentesis samples also can be used to determine paternity. The woman's cells aren't necessary, just the man's and the child's. Most screenings cost $475 to $1,800, with results taking a few days.

"Business is definitely growing," said Lisa McDaniel, spokeswoman for one of the nation's largest testing labs, DNA Diagnostic Center in Fairfield, Ohio. "It's been very interesting to watch this slow movement really building. But a lot of men are stuck in a Catch 22 situation. They have no power whatsoever if a woman says they're the father, unless they think about the DNA testing.

"A lot of men don't even care about the child support. They just want peace of mind. They've always wondered if their child is actually theirs. We help them find out."

Finding out isn't always great for the social order. A pilot program in the United Kingdom sought to give routine paternity tests every time a child was born. Doctors gave up when they found out 15 percent of the babies weren't really offspring of the bloke in the waiting room, sparking a surge in divorces.

Questions of paternity came up in nearly 35,000 Allegheny County Family Court cases last year. In about 12,000 of those cases, the judges threw out requests for support, often based on the results of a paternity test. That figure is consistent with the 1-in-3 average reported by testing labs nationwide.

The sheer volume of the problem has veterans of divorce wars wondering where biotechnology could lead us.

"Technology has now outstripped the law," said Linda Liechty, Allegheny County's court administrator and herself an attorney with more than a decade of courtroom experience. "Now the law probably ought to change, but as a society we're not there yet.

"I also understand the other side of the issue. As a society, we also need to care for the children and make sure their interests are protected. In many cases, the man has raised a baby, too. That child thinks of the man as his or her father. But there are other cases where a man was forced to get genetic testing, and once he learned that he wasn't the father, he didn't care about the child anymore. That's a reality we must confront."

Gerald Harris is "50-50 sure" that the 13-year-old child he's seen only "once or twice" isn't his. The 38-year-old laborer from Highland Park sat quietly in Family Court's intake room Friday, waiting for a nurse to swab his mouth.

"I wonder why I was never told I could've been the father 13 years ago," Harris said. "I mean, I'm here 13 years later, and now I have to go to court. I wasn't named the father then, and I don't know who was. It's the system. I call the courts here the 'United Snakes of America.' The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, and now I'm facing this."

But children's advocates believe the Pennsylvania law should stand. The Pennsylvania Bar Association opposed the last attempt in Harrisburg to bring genetic testing into marriages, arguing the measure wouldn't serve the best interests of most children. The reality, the lawyers said, is that the vast majority of children would be worse off if the law exempted men from paying child support, forcing the mother to go without money while raising the child. The association also worried that public court petitions contesting paternity would let too many children learn their fathers weren't really their fathers, ripping the social tapestry.

"I remember when I first started seeing the states bringing out the paternity-testing statutes in the 1990s," recalled prominent Philadelphia attorney Ned Hark, who drafted the bar association's response to the 1999-2000 legislation. "I thought, 'Hey, the 1990s are supposed to be the Decade of the Child. But we're not thinking about the children. We're thinking about a few men wrongfully paying child support instead of a law that really helps far, far more kids.'

"The bottom line is that no one can say attorneys are taking a position here to create more work, more money, for themselves. The reality is if genetic testing were allowed in more cases, we would have more work to do. We're actually saying we will go without more work if you preserve a law that really helps kids."

A man can be named the father of a child in three main ways under Pennsylvania law:

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