[Wild Lotus]

I'm not sure if this goes here. It's sort of identify theft, sort of family law.

My sister is 36, two years younger than me. When she was 21, she "ran away" from home, became a prostitute, was arrested several times for possession of drugs and prostitution, and generally began a steep downward decline. I believe she is a heroin user and I suspect she has a personality disorder. My mother is mentally ill, and I've always believed when you're raised by a crazy woman, you either become mentally ill yourself or overcompensate by being hyper-competent. I was the competent one, my sister was the crazy one.

She has 6 kids, by 3 different fathers (that we know of), 2 of whom are in jail. She has been on welfare for at least the past 10 years. I stopped talking to her several years ago because I got tired of bailing her out of jail, watching her attempt to ruin my parent's credit with her schemes, and neglect her children. At the time, I seriously considered suing for custody of her children because I felt sorry for them being raised by her. The only reason I didn't was that I was a single parent at the time, working several jobs at a time to keep my head above water. I just couldn't raise her kids too.

Today I found out from my parents that my sister has put my name as the mother on the birth certificate of at least one of her children. They aren't sure which one. My sister is very dodgy, won't answer questions directly, lies, and hides a lot. My parent's aren't even sure which states some of these kids might have been born in.

What kind of freakin loser puts someone else's name as the mother of their children? She must have been in a state where there was a warrant for her arrest, so she used my name in the hospital.

I have to do a criminal check to find out what states this freak has warrants in. Then I'll have to contact the Dept of Vital Statistics in those states to see if I have any kids born to me there.

I'm also going to have to make sure she hasn't used my name any time she was arrested. My credit is pretty good but I'll have to run a credit check on myself and make sure there isn't anything lurking there that I don't know about. It would have shown up when we bought this house 4 years ago, but you never know. She could have used my name when applying for social services too.

We know for a fact she has been using many different names, but it never occurred to us that she would use MY name! I'm not sure what the ramifications of having my name as the mother on these kid's birth certificates could be. Does anyone know?

[aaron]

If she was using your name and Social Security number to apply for public assistance, it is possible that she committed welfare fraud using your name.

I could posit unusual scenarios where the inaccurate name on the birth certificate could cause future problems (e.g., one of her children makes a claim against your estate at some time in the future, claiming to be your heir). If the children know who their mother is, though, that's unlikely to happen.

If you were to file a legal action against her, you should be able to compel her to produce birth certificates for all of her children. That, unfortunately, would likely be an unnecessarily burdensome approach, and it is not immediately clear what cause of action you might bring - you would have to brainstorm with a local lawyer. And even if you got such a court order, would she comply with it? What a mess.