Ohio Paternity Ruling: No Recovery of $41,000 Child Support

Ohio Paternity Ruling: No Recovery of $41,000 Child Support

Ohio's Third District Court of Appeals affirmed on September 8, 2026 that a man who paid about $41,000 in child support cannot recover it after a 2019 DNA test excluded him as the biological father. Ohio's paternity relief statute operates only going forward.

Information last verified on September 9, 2026.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers Ohio law, specifically R.C. Chapter 3119 and Ohio Civ.R. 60(B) as applied by the Third District Court of Appeals. It does not cover federal law, the paternity or child support statutes of any other state, non-US law, or any criminal consequence of misstating a child's parentage.

What Happened

Mark Stump and Patty Auck married in 1980 (2026-Ohio-3522, ¶2). Both testified that the marriage was strained from 1980 to 1982, and that in 1982 Auck had an extramarital affair with a man named Patrick Egnor. Auck also had intercourse with Stump on his birthday, November 12, 1982. Jennifer was born roughly nine months later, on August 26, 1983. The marriage was dissolved on April 13, 1988, and under the parties' separation agreement Stump paid approximately $41,000 in child support from the dissolution until Jennifer was emancipated on May 26, 2002 (¶2).

On December 24, 2018, Jennifer received a text message from Egnor claiming that he was her real father, and she forwarded it to both Stump and Auck (¶3). Auck responded that it was possible. In January 2019, Jennifer and Egnor took a commercial DNA test, and the results indicated that Egnor was Jennifer's father. Stump testified that until that text message he had no reason to believe Jennifer was not his child (¶3).

Stump then consulted six or seven attorneys over a period of two to four years before finding counsel willing to take the case (¶4). He filed his motion for relief from paternity, request for genetic testing, and request for recovery of child support payments on June 14, 2023 (¶4). The trial court first granted Auck summary judgment on October 31, 2023, but the Third District reversed and remanded in Auck v. Stump, 2024-Ohio-2220 (3d Dist.), decided June 10, 2024.

On remand, Auck abandoned summary judgment and a magistrate held an evidentiary hearing on September 30, 2024, issuing a decision denying the motion on March 4, 2025 (¶5). Stump objected, and the trial judge chose to rehear the motion himself on July 22, 2025, telling the parties at the close of that hearing, "[w]e're not going to deal with objections from my magistrate. I just decided to hear them all fresh" (¶11, quoting the July 22, 2025 transcript at 91). The trial court overruled the motion in a judgment entry filed August 19, 2025 (¶5).

Judge Mark C. Miller wrote the appellate opinion, with Presiding Judge William R. Zimmerman and Judge John R. Willamowski concurring. The court quoted the trial court's core statutory reasoning:

"[T]his relief only applies to a party currently paying child support and for relief from future payments. There is no mechanism of for [sic] child support that has already been paid." (¶20, quoting the August 19, 2025 judgment entry)

Notably, the magistrate and the trial judge reached the same result by different routes (¶13 n.3). The magistrate found that Stump failed to comply with R.C. 3119.962 because he did not supply genetic test results from a test administered within six months before filing. The trial judge instead concluded that R.C. 3119.961 and the sections following it did not apply at all, leaving Civ.R. 60(B) as the only avenue. The appeals court agreed with the trial judge and held that the genetic testing question under R.C. 3119.962 was therefore moot (¶20).

What the Law Actually Says

Ohio enacted its paternity relief scheme in Senate Bill 180, effective March 22, 2001, with R.C. 3119.961 amended by House Bill 208 effective January 25, 2002. R.C. 3119.961(A) opens by displacing the usual rule: "Notwithstanding the provisions to the contrary in Civil Rule 60(B) and in accordance with this section, a person may file a motion for relief from a final judgment, court order, or administrative determination or order that determines that the person or a male minor referred to in division (B) of section 3109.19 of the Revised Code is the father of a child or from a child support order under which the person or male minor is the obligor."

Read to its limits, that sentence describes two targets: a paternity determination, and a child support order under which the movant "is the obligor," in the present tense. It does not mention money already transferred.

R.C. 3119.962(A)(1) then sets the conditions for granting relief. A court shall grant relief only if it receives "genetic test results from a genetic test administered no more than six months prior to the filing of the motion for relief that finds that there is a zero per cent probability that the person or male minor is the father of the child," the movant has not adopted the child, and the child was not conceived through artificial insemination under R.C. 3111.88 to 3111.96. R.C. 3119.962(B) adds a hard bar: a court shall not grant relief if it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the man knew he was not the natural father before the relevant acknowledgment, presumption, or support order.

The recovery question turns on R.C. 3119.964(B), which the panel quoted in full. It permits a court that grants relief to cancel an arrearage, and then says: "Nothing in this section limits any actions that may be taken by the person or male minor granted relief under this section to recover support paid under the child support order from which relief was granted." That is a savings clause, not a cause of action. The panel read it exactly that way, citing its own earlier holding that "[b]ecause [R.C. 3119.961, et seq,] does not expressly provide for the ability to recover monies previously paid, it is presumed to operate prospectively only" (¶20, quoting Van Hoose v. Brown, 2004-Ohio-4701, ¶ 8 (3d Dist.)). Van Hoose grounded that presumption in R.C. 1.48, which provides that a statute is presumed prospective unless expressly made retrospective.

Two other pieces of the scheme matter to anyone weighing a filing. R.C. 3119.965 provides that a grant of relief does not preclude a later action under Chapter 3111, but the action it authorizes is narrow: it establishes a parent-child relationship between the man who was granted relief and the same child, not a claim against the biological father or anyone else, and no more than one such action may be filed in any two-year period. A court may enter judgment finding that relationship only if genetic tests taken after the grant of relief show a statistical probability that he is the natural father. And R.C. 3119.966(A) provides that if relief from a child support order is not granted under R.C. 3119.962, "the court shall require the person who filed the motion for relief to pay all court costs of the action and the reasonable attorney's fees of the opposing party." The Third District did not discuss that fee-shifting provision in this opinion, but it sits in the same statutory chain. Readers comparing this outcome with the way support obligations are set in the first place can review how Ohio calculates and enforces child support orders.

That leaves Civ.R. 60(B), effective July 1, 1970, which allows relief from a final judgment for mistake, newly discovered evidence, "[f]raud (whether heretofore denominated intrinsic or extrinsic), misrepresentation or other misconduct of an adverse party," satisfaction of the judgment, or "[a]ny other reason justifying relief from the judgment." The timing sentence is the one that decided this case: "The motion shall be made within a reasonable time, and for reasons (1), (2) and (3) not more than one year after the judgment, order or proceeding was entered or taken."

Stump therefore argued fraud upon the court under Civ.R. 60(B)(5), which carries no one-year cap, rather than fraud of an adverse party under Civ.R. 60(B)(3), which does. The panel rejected the characterization. It cited Caruso-Ciresi, Inc. v. Lohman, 5 Ohio St.3d 64, 66 (1983), for the rule that "Nor should Civ.R. 60(B)(5) be used as a substitute for any of the other more specific provisions of Civ.R. 60(B)," and Coulson v. Coulson, 5 Ohio St.3d 12, 15 (1983), for the proposition that "in the usual case, a party must resort to a motion under Civ.R. 60(B)(3)" (¶¶24, 26). Fraud upon the court, the panel explained through Mancz v. McHenry, 2022-Ohio-3256, ¶ 26, reaches only fraud that defiles the court itself or is perpetrated by officers of the court (¶25).

The court found the facts parallel to Stairwalt v. Stairwalt, 2008-Ohio-2597 (2d Dist.), where a man sought previously paid support under Civ.R. 60(B)(5) after alleging his ex-wife lied about paternity, and distinguished the two cases Stump offered: Schaefer v. Mazii, 2019-Ohio-3808 (1st Dist.), where the husband was married to two other women, the parties were battling competing custody orders from Bahrain and Russia, and he was using the Ohio divorce decree as leverage in the Russian proceeding, and In re Dissolution of Marriage of Watson, 13 Ohio App. 3d 344 (1983), which involved a concealed pregnancy and the custody and support of a minor child (¶¶27 to 29). The panel closed:

"Because we find the Motion for Relief should have been brought under Civ.R. 60(B)(3) and the one-year limitation period has long passed, and because we find no mechanism for relief for previously paid child support under R.C. 3119.961, we find the trial court did not abuse it [sic] discretion in dismissing the Motion for Relief." (¶30)

The court also overruled Stump's first assignment of error, which argued that the trial court abused its discretion and deprived him of due process when it adopted the magistrate's decision. Whether the case had been referred to the magistrate at all was a threshold matter: the panel pointed to a June 15, 2023 docket entry noting a referee assignment and the magistrate's name, and held under Proctor v. Proctor, 48 Ohio App.3d 55, 59 (3d Dist. 1988), that a failure to journalize a referral is procedural rather than jurisdictional and requires a showing of prejudice (¶¶9, 10). On the adoption itself, the panel held that the trial court satisfied Civ.R. 53 by conducting its own July 22, 2025 hearing and filing a judgment entry with its own factual findings and legal conclusions, and that objections a trial court does not expressly address are presumed overruled sub silentio (¶14, citing Shaffer v. Shaffer, 109 Ohio App.3d 205, 212 (3d Dist. 1996)).

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The practical lesson in this opinion is that Ohio's paternity relief statute and the money already paid under a support order sit in two different legal compartments. R.C. 3119.961 opens a door that Civ.R. 60(B) would otherwise close, but the Third District read that door as opening onto future payments only, because R.C. 1.48 presumes prospective operation and nothing in R.C. 3119.962 or R.C. 3119.964 expressly reaches backward (¶20, quoting Van Hoose at ¶ 8). The savings clause in R.C. 3119.964(B) preserves other actions rather than creating one, so a man who wins statutory relief still has to find an independent legal theory to chase the money.

The second compartment is timing, and it is unforgiving by design. Once the panel classified the alleged misrepresentation as fraud of an adverse party, Civ.R. 60(B)(3) supplied a one-year outside limit measured from the 1988 judgment, not from the 2019 DNA result. That is the structural feature worth understanding: the rule's one-year outer limit runs from the judgment, order or proceeding itself, and it runs alongside the separate reasonable-time requirement, so a discovery that arrives decades later cannot restart it. Ohio's answer to that hardship was the statute, and the statute is prospective.

Footnote 4 also supplies an alternative holding on the reasonable-time requirement that governs Civ.R. 60(B)(5). The panel wrote that a three-year delay between discovering the grounds for relief and filing would fail the reasonable-time requirement, and it called the argument that difficulty retaining counsel should excuse the delay unpersuasive. One wrinkle worth flagging for anyone reading the footnote closely: it refers to a March 2022 filing and a delay of more than three years, while the body of the same opinion (¶4) and the court's earlier decision in this case (2024-Ohio-2220, ¶ 5) both place the motion on June 14, 2023, which is a longer gap.

This is also a reminder that paternity disputes are governed by procedure at least as much as by biology, a pattern visible across states. Kansas courts took a similar procedural line when a father tried to undo a four-year-old paternity acknowledgment, and Florida legislators have been reworking the front end of the problem through the SB 1128 changes to unwed-father paternity procedure. The deadlines differ by state, but the shape is the same: the window to contest opens early and closes fast.

How This Affects You

If you are an Ohio support obligor who has learned that you may not be a child's biological father, this decision draws a line between two questions that are easy to conflate. Whether you can stop or be relieved from an existing order is the question R.C. 3119.961 and R.C. 3119.962 address. Whether you can get back what you already paid is a separate question that, under this opinion and Van Hoose, the statute does not answer in your favor (¶20).

Timing is the variable you can actually control. R.C. 3119.962(A)(1)(a) requires genetic test results from a test administered no more than six months before the motion is filed, so an older commercial test result does not satisfy the statute on its own. Civ.R. 60(B)(3) sets a one-year cap running from the judgment. Civ.R. 60(B)(5) has no fixed cap but still requires filing within a reasonable time, and this panel said a three-year delay after discovery would fail that test even where the movant pointed to difficulty finding counsel (¶23 n.4).

Costs deserve a look before filing. R.C. 3119.966(A) directs a court to order a movant who does not obtain relief under R.C. 3119.962 to pay court costs and the opposing party's reasonable attorney fees, and the Third District assessed appellate costs to Stump in its judgment entry.

Finally, geography matters. This opinion binds trial courts in Ohio's Third Appellate District and is persuasive, not controlling, in Ohio's other districts and in every other state. Support obligations, modification standards, and paternity contest windows vary substantially from one jurisdiction to the next, as the state-by-state overview of United States support obligations sets out.

This article is general legal information about Ohio law, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Details were verified against primary sources on September 9, 2026, and statutes, rules, and case law can change. For guidance about a specific paternity or child support matter, consult an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.

Related articles

• Ohio Child Support Laws: Guidelines and Calculator
• How child support obligations are set across the United States
• Kansas court refuses to undo a four-year-old paternity acknowledgment
• Florida's SB 1128 and unwed-father paternity procedure

Last updated: 2026-09-09. Details verified as of 2026-09-09.