So far, Kansas is the last state I’ve found to enact prenatal child support, doing so in 1990 & 2006. What’s unique is *how* the legislature worded it. The presumption is that the father *did* provide support during pregnancy, & the statutes list penalties when he did not.
1/
1/
The 1990 legislation (SB 431) makes changes to Chapter 59 (Probate Court) of the Kansas Statutes in relation to adoption. If it can be proven that the father knew of the pregnancy & neglected to provide support, the mother can place the child for adoption w/o his veto.
2/
2/
This legislation also specifically allows for the adoptive parents to provide support as part of the adoption contract. (All references to support are 2nd trimester onward.)
3/
3/
In 2006, the legislature added (in HB 2352) a new section to Chapter 38 (Minors), codifying prenatal child support from the father.
But why was Kansas so late at codifying it?
4/
kansas.gov/government/leg…
But why was Kansas so late at codifying it?
4/
kansas.gov/government/leg…
I searched through a century of annotations of Kansas statutes for any references to court cases setting judicial precedent in the manner its neighbors Colorado & Nebraska did decades before codifying their own laws (in 1953 & 1941, resp.). Nothing came up in the search.
5/
5/
That had me wondering if common law had evolved among those states over the 20th century. Since, nearly all neighboring states already had prenatal child support laws in the their books, I think it would be a reasonable assumption.
6/6
6/6
