By MELVIN CLAXTON and SHEILA BURKE, Tennessean Staff Writers

July 23, 2007, The Tennessean (USA)---Randall Robinson's story is the flip side of the paternity controversy often sparked by DNA testing.

In 2003, the Murfreesboro plumber was one of two men named as the possible father in a belatedpaternity case. DNA tests later confirmed he was the biological parent.

The discovery that he had a son wasn't all happy news for Robinson. The boy was 12 years old, and the mother wanted retroactive child support going back to the day he was born. The total bill: $73,049 in back child support and reimbursement of medical and educational expenses. That was more than Robinson's gross income for the previous two years. And it was in addition to the $400 a month in child support he began paying after he got the DNA results.

Robinson's experience reflects the complexity of financial and emotional issues surrounding paternity, and highlights the impact of DNA on such cases.

The ability of DNA technology to irrefutably identify the biological father has set in motion a series of ugly paternity squabbles across the state.

Case aired private details

Much had transpired in the lives of the mother and Robinson since the child was conceived. He had married and was the father of two girls. She had married and divorced twice.

She had never named Robinson as the father on any official document or tried to collect child support before filing the paternity suit, court records show. In court, she insisted she told him he was the father, something Robinson denied under oath.

It was eight months after her second divorce in 1993 that the mother filed her paternity case. Court records show that both of her ex-husbands had good-paying jobs and provided for her and her son during the marriages.

By August 2004, Robinson found himself in court with intimate details of his personal life on public display, the collateral damage of paternity suits. The case would involve testimony from relatives, friends and an ex-spouse as the court tried to determine if Robinson should pay the retroactive support because he knew, or should have known, the child was his from birth.

In the end, the court denied the request for back child support and set Robinson's support payments at $548 a month. The mother appealed the case and lost.

Robinson couldn't be reached for comment. But he has clearly seen his renewed relationship with the mother of his newly discovered son get off to a rocky, litigious start.