Fake News: NO New Law Says You Must Pay Child Support If The Person You Are Dating Has Kids

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: NO New Law Says You Must Pay Child Support If The Person You Are Dating Has Kids

Does a new law say you have to pay child support if the person you are dating has kids? No, that's not true: a supposedly satirical website seems to have stolen and repurposed an article from somewhere else and presented it as real news. However there is no such legislation and most of the article barely makes sense because it appears to have been mutilated through a process called "spinning".

The viral version of the story appeared as an article (archived here) on WitTheShit where it was published on April 7, 2018 under the title "NEW LAW: You must pay child support if the person your dating has kids". It opened:

Under this new legislation If a man or woman dates a person with kids it is mandatory for them to pay child support on all kids even if they are not your own.

Below this new laws women and men will probably be required to pay little one help if the particular person their relationship has youngsters. Sure it is a unusual legislation but it surely falls below the Frequent Regulation marriage which if a {couples} stay in the identical home for over 7 years the associate can take half of every little thing. Sure this implies in case you stay along with somebody for over 7 years you may be required to pay alimony to your EX Girlfriend or Boy Buddy.

So what does this imply for folks in relationships with a associate that has youngsters? Nicely the state may take as much as 30% out of your verify per little one.

We found no trace of such a law on the books and the text of the article itself seems to be the result of "spinning":

Article spinning - Wikipedia

Article spinning is a writing technique used in search engine optimization (SEO), and other applications, which creates what appears to be new content from what already exists. Content spinning works by replacing specific words, phrases, sentences, or even entire paragraphs with any number of alternate versions to provide a slightly different variation with each spin.

Here are some of the phrases from the article that were likely "spun" and what we think was probably the original text or meaning:

  • "Below this new laws": Under this new legislation
  • "little one help": child support
  • "Frequent Regulation marriage": common law marriage
  • "{couples}": this may actually be a remnant of notation used in the spinning software with the brackets indicating the word or phrase should be replaced by a synonym
  • "the identical home": the same house
  • "30% out of your verify per little one": 30% out of your (pay)check per child

Unfortunately we were unable to find the original text the "spun" version was based on (which is frequently the reason spinning is used, i.e. to avoid plagiarism detection tools and filters).

The website WitTheShit has a subheader that reads "MOST SAVAGE NAME IN SATIRE NEWS" and the footer carries a disclaimer that reads:

WitTheShit is a group who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. 7.2 million strong We are Declaring a satire WAR on EVERYONE!

However the subheader is not visible on the mobile version of the site and the footer is only reachable after scrolling a long time so in accordance with our Satire Policy we generally rate stories from the site as "False" (since the aim here appears to be deceiving people into thinking the stories are real rather than criticizing or mocking the flaws and vices of certain laws, policies, people or institutions).


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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