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Judge rules Broward mayor does not have to pay child support |
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Written by ELGIN JONES
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 FORT LAUDERDALE- After several years of litigation and countless delays, a Broward judicial General Magistrate has issued a ruling that relinquishes Broward County Mayor Jos-ephus Eggelletion from having to pay support for a child he fathered with a woman outside of his marriage.
General Magistrate Barbara M. Beilly, in her Nov. 6 ruling, stated that Eggelletion does not have to pay child support because the mother previously claimed that another man – her ex-husband – was the father. The mother also filed a claim against her ex-husband for child support.
Eggelletion did not return calls seeking comment. His attorney, Patricia Gainer-Gaddis, could not be reached.
“I think it’s sad, and like my daddy always said, ‘Every man should take care of his children,’ ” said the mother, Angelita Sanders, from her Savannah, Ga. home.
She and her attorneys vowed to appeal.
“It’s not fair that you have some men out there struggling to keep from being locked up while trying to support their children, then to have a court rule that a county mayor does not have to take care of his responsibilities,’’ Sanders said. “I can’t imagine how any man could be pleased with such a ruling.”
Even though a 2004 court-ordered DNA paternity test proved Eggelletion was the father, Beilly ruled that state law prevented her from issuing an order of child support in the case.
Sanders signed an agreement stating that her ex-husband, Delmus Lockhart, was the father during her 1992 divorce proceedings in a Georgia court.
In a final order issued there, Lockhart was given visitation rights, and was ordered to pay child support for the boy, who is now a 20-year-old college student in Atlanta.
Beilly wrote in her ruling that since the child-support order remains in effect in Georgia, another court cannot issue a duplicate order.
Lockhart appeared at one hearing in Broward, and even testified in the Eggelletion case on Sanders’ behalf. Both Lockhart and Sanders acknowledged that Lockhart never paid any child support.
Sanders’ attorney, Robert Barrar, presented orders from a Georgia court stating that Sanders’ attorneys there had removed Lockhart from the case, but that order did not vacate the divorce final order.
“We will file objections and exceptions to the ruling with the circuit court judge,” Barrar said. “They are numerous, and I am confident we will prevail.”
Barrar said he is preparing to appeal Beilly’s ruling to the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach if the ruling is not reversed.
Ironically, Sanders and her Georgia attorneys were scheduled to appear in court this coming Monday to petition the courts in Georgia to have the divorce order set aside.
Sanders said Eggelletion’s attorneys moved to have that hearing rescheduled after this week’s ruling came down in their favor.
She also said that due to the death of her father, Elbert Rice, 67, of Fort Lauderdale this week, she also intended to ask for a new court date.
According to her testimony, Sanders was 25 and married to Lockhart when she became pregnant with the child from Eggelletion, who was also married.
During a Sept. 26, hearing, Eggelletion testified that he and Sanders had a brief affair, having sex only on a few occasions.
Sanders’ attorney disputed that and at one point during the hearing, Barrar began detailing Sanders’ contentions that the relationship first began when she was an underage student and teacher’s assistant in the Dillard High School classroom where Eggelletion was a teacher.
Beilly intervened, stating that such discussions were outside the scope of the hearing’s legal purpose.
Eggelletion and his attorney argued that Sanders has committed fraud by blaming the paternity on her husband when the child was born, and during the divorce proceedings. They also questioned why she waited years to file for support. Barrar, however, said the child-support filings were well within the statute of limitations.
Nevertheless, Beilly stated in her ruling that Sanders waited to file her child-support claim “for an unreasonable and unexplained length of time.’’
Though Sanders disputes it, Beilly also stated in her ruling that Eggelletion did not know he was the child’s father until Sanders sought support from him. By that time, the child was a teenager.
Eggelletion, Beilly stated in her ruling, “has been deprived of a relationship with the child until the child was 17 years old.’’
Sanders, now 45, has since re-married.
Eggelletion, 58, is still married to his wife.
Eggelletion served on the Lauderdale Lakes City Commission and in the Florida House of Representatives before being elected to the county commission in 2000.
Eggelletion offered $17,000 to settle the child-support case earlier this year. But Sanders rejected the offer, citing the amount of money she has spent to raise the boy over the years and the cost of putting him through college.
The young man is one of several children Eggelletion has fathered outside of his marriage. He is under a court order to make child-support payments for a daughter he shares with a Tallahassee-area woman.
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Photo by Elgin Jones/BT Staff. Attorney Barbara Gainer-Gaddis, left, and her client, Broward County Mayor Josephus Eggelletion, right.
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