When shouldn't the biological father pay support?
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By Jeremy Eugene Reed in General Published: Tuesday, 04 December 07 - 07:28 PM (GMT) Last Updated: Wednesday, 05 December 07 - 06:39 PM (GMT) |
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Okay, so this is an interesting case. Basically, the mayor of a city in
What I think is really important here is that the mayor did not know that he was the father of this child for the entire time from conception until 17 years later. He never had an opportunity to develop a relationship with the child. And now, when the chance to develop any meaningful parent child relationship has passed, the mother seeks child support. It looks like she was seeking support because her ex husband never paid any of it.
The court found that even though the mayor was the biological father, he did not have to pay any child support because there was an existing order for support in place. While it does not sound like the mayor is an angel in any sense of the word, I must say that this ruling makes a lot of sense to me, at least when we look at how these cases normally go… Woman tells man that he is the father, he isn’t, but he can’t ever escape his duty to pay for a child that isn’t his. Here-the non-biological father never pays, so the mother seeks money from elsewhere-the biological father. Treating men as a means for support only misses the point-a father/child relationship is important to both the father and the child.
I will never defend fathers who neglect that relationship, especially if it has been previously developed. However, when a father has been denied the right to this relationship by the unilateral acts of the mother, I cannot find fault with him when he doesn’t want to pay her a bunch of money to put “his” child through college. It would be like telling any of you to send me many thousands of dollars-you don’t know me, and while I assure you I am really a deserving guy, you might want to know me personally before giving me tens of thousands of dollars. Oh, by the way, the mayor did offer $17,000 to settle the case, but that amount was deemed insufficient by the mother. I am glad to see that this court, however unintentionally, placed a premium on the father-child relationship, recognizing that fathers have a right to know their children, and are not simply an “ATM” for paying the mothers bills with no access to the child.
You can read the article here http://www.browardtimes.com/index.phpoption=com_content&task=view&id=742&Itemid=1 .
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| Here is an interesting video from CNN ht (...) | Matthew Kring | 12/05/07 |
Lessons Learned
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Jeremy Reed | 12/05/07 |
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Top | Reply to this Author: Matthew Kring Date Posted: 05 Dec 2007 04:30 PM (GMT) Here is an interesting video from CNN http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/12/04/lklv.sperm.donor.dad.cnn |
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Top | Reply to this Title: Lessons Learned Author: Jeremy Reed 
(http://mrmensrights.terapad.com/)Date Posted: 05 Dec 2007 10:54 PM (GMT) So normally, a sperm donor would NOT be liable-basically, there is a contractual agreement that the donor will not be liable, will have no parental rights, etc... Furthermore, in the typical situation, the donor is anonymous, so the mother wouldn't know who to sue anyway. Here, the mistake is that this man had a relationship with the child, and identified himself as the father, going so far as to sign the birth certificate. In most states (In fact, all states that I am aware of) acknowledgement on the birth certificate that a man is the father is enoung to create a rebuttable presumption that the man is the father-and after a set amount of time, such as six months, the man has no further right to challenge paternity. The man in this case was almost certainly trying to do the right thing, give the child a male influence, let the child know where it came from, etc...However, no good deed goes unpunished, and now he will almost certainly be liable for child support for the child that he fathered by donating sperm to a couple that could not have conceived without him, a couple that promised him that he would not have any parental duties to this child whatsoever, a couple that probably told this man how desparately they wanted a child, that they couldn't do it without him-a couple where at least one of them has seen the dollar signs above this guy's head-go figure. |
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