Father one more and go to jail, court tells penniless procreator

He has fathered at least nine children by four mothers. But David Oakley is better at procreating than providing and owes $25,000 in child support, a Wisconsin court has been told.

Now the latter has found a novel way of dealing with him. It has suspended an eight-year jail term for default on payments on condition he does not father any more children for five years. If he does, and the court hears about it, it's the slammer for Oakley.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision on Tuesday to uphold a lower court sentence is a radical response to the widespread problem of defaulting fathers who in the US owe some $11 billion in court-ordered maintenance to their children. While the US Supreme Court has established that the right to have children is a fundamental right, the Wisconsin court has ruled that such a right is circumscribed by Oakley's criminal status.

The ruling divided the court on sex lines, four to three, with the three women judges warning that the court was going too far in curbing the exercise of a basic right. One complained that the ruling might lead to a woman having an abortion to save Oakley from jail while another wrote of the order as a "state-sponsored, court-enforced financial test for future parenthood".

The majority, however, found reasonable the view taken by the judge in the county court that Oakley would not be able to pay any maintenance if he was in jail. Moreover, they argued, if he had been jailed he would have lost the right to father for eight years.

"Here is a man who has shown himself time and again to be totally and completely irresponsible," wrote Justice William Bablitch for the majority. "It is overwhelmingly obvious that any child he fathers in the future is doomed to a future of neglect, abuse or worse."

The prosecutor, Mr Thomas Balistreri, said the ruling applied only to people like Oakley who refused to pay child support, not to those who could not pay.

Oakley's lawyer said they were considering an appeal to the US Supreme Court.