Finnish man ordered by court to pay alimony for a child resulting from his wife cheating: this week in the strange death of Europe

[Metaphor]

@Metaphor : do you believe that, if the state learns that the man who accepted fatherhood is not the biological father (which they assume he didn't know either), it should should automatically transfer legal fatherhood to the biological father?

No. What would make you think I support any kind of 'automatic' transfer of legal fatherhood?

What if he actually does know he's not the biological father (because they informally but consensually used an acquaintance as sperm donor and never thought it relevant to tell the authorities? Should he have to fight to remain a father if the sperm donor doesn't honor his part of the deal and demands to take over?

No. A sperm donor is, in fact, the textbook case for being a bio father but having no rights and no responsibilities towards the produced offspring. I should say, they ought be the textbook case, as some jurisdictions pursue sperm donors as if they had consented to being a social parent. I deeply opposed the rules in a case a few years ago when a man, out of altruism, donated his sperm to a lesbian couple. The lesbian couple produced a child, then split up, and the birth mother went on welfare. The State went after the bio father (the sperm donor) for money. That was wrong. Similarly, a friend of mine donated eggs a few years ago out of altruism to strangers (and donating eggs is a way, way bigger act of altruism than jizzing into a cup). If down the road, she demanded legal status as the mother, it would be wrong to grant it to her.

In short: no. A sperm donor knows and agrees he is giving up parental rights and obligations at the time of donation.

In most cases, I think parental rights (the right to have access or custody) go along with parental responsibilities (the obligation to provide material resources), but in some particular cases, bio fathers ought have the rights without legally-coerced responsibilities--the cases where adult women have raped boys and become pregnant.

 

[Jokodo]

You and others also explicitly said they think there should be no time limit to any of that. So, do you believe that a bio-dad who, respecting the wishes of the mother and legal father, opted out of playing the role of a father when they found out he was the father (say when the child was too years old too keep it comparable to the case at hand) should get to change his mind at any time? And to nullify the legal father's status at the wink of a finger?

How would you get the idea that I think someone's legal and/or social status as a father can and should be 'nullified' by the bio father's say so in every instance? Where have I said anything like that?

If it isn't automatic, if a court has to decide on a case by case basis, there will be cases where it's not a priori clear which way they will, or even should decide, and there will be rules that help them decide, some of which may have undesired consequences in specific cases. You have not demonstrated that whatever it is you're proposing fairs better than current Finnish law in minimising the number of cases with intuitively unjust outcomes.

If the bio father and the legal father work out an arrangement, as in your scenario, that the legal father will remain the legal father, I don't see what the issue is. If later the bio father wants visitation rights, I believe he should get them (again, barring obvious unfitness).

That's what your religion says, I know. But here we have a case of a bad situation for a man being brought about by patriarchical assumptions that are ingrained in laws written decades ago. Feminists seem like an obvious choice of audience to fire up against that problem.

Resisting religion is not a religion, Jokodo.

It also seems very strange to me that you think feminists would be allied with my viewpoint on this issue. Toni is a self-described feminist, and she is deeply opposed to my viewpoint on this issue and agrees with the existing Finnish law. Of course, other feminists might agree with me, but that's because feminism is incoherent.

 

[Metaphor]

If it isn't automatic, if a court has to decide on a case by case basis, there will be cases where it's not a priori clear which way they will, or even should decide, and there will be rules that help them decide, some of which may have undesired consequences in specific cases. You have not demonstrated that whatever it is you're proposing fairs better than current Finnish law in minimising the number of cases with intuitively unjust outcomes.

No. I have not said that courts should decide on a case by case basis; I said a bio father merely announcing his status does not automatically nullify the social father's rights and responsibilities.

I haven't proposed an entire family law act, I answered your questions. I also said that the Finnish law in this particular area was wrong.

You appear to be confusing having the legislation take into account nuance with 'having the courts decide on a case by case basis'. Any legislation I would propose would have to be nuanced for all the reasons I've already given. There could not be a blanket 'bio father trumps social father automatically' provision, because I do not believe the bio father should trump the social father automatically. Any legislation I propose would also acknowledge that bio fathers and social fathers can both have a legitimate interest in their children. Any legislation I propose would also acknowledge that becoming a father requires consent.

And, to make it clear, the kind of legislation I would propose would be deeply opposed by feminists, in case you still think they would be good allies in such a fight.

 

[Jokodo]

If it isn't automatic, if a court has to decide on a case by case basis, there will be cases where it's not a priori clear which way they will, or even should decide, and there will be rules that help them decide, some of which may have undesired consequences in specific cases. You have not demonstrated that whatever it is you're proposing fairs better than current Finnish law in minimising the number of cases with intuitively unjust outcomes.

No. I have not said that courts should decide on a case by case basis; I said a bio father merely announcing his status does not automatically nullify the social father's rights and responsibilities.

I haven't proposed an entire family law act, I answered your questions. I also said that the Finnish law in this particular area was wrong.

You appear to be confusing having the legislation take into account nuance with 'having the courts decide on a case by case basis'. Any legislation I would propose would have to be nuanced for all the reasons I've already given. There could not be a blanket 'bio father trumps social father automatically' provision, because I do not believe the bio father should trump the social father automatically. Any legislation I propose would also acknowledge that bio fathers and social fathers can both have a legitimate interest in their children. Any legislation I propose would also acknowledge that becoming a father requires consent.

And, to make it clear, the kind of legislation I would propose would be deeply opposed by feminists, in case you still think they would be good allies in such a fight.

None of that suggests that you have thought things through, or that whatever solution you have in mind produces better outcomes on average than current Finnish law - even if we agree that the latter misdelievered in this one case.

 

[Arctish]

Then you and I are miscommunicating again.


The terms you are using are shifting.

Toni's statement was about assuming the woman in the OP article "had nefarious motives and was in general a dishonest person". Now you're talking about "the suggestion that she is capable of poor motives".

Assuming something is true is different from suggesting it's a possibility.

But who was even assuming anything? It is obvious that the woman did a number of dishonest things.

We have evidence she did one dishonest thing. Apparently she embezzled money from her employer.

We have no evidence she knew who the father of her child was before the child was born. You are assuming she knew when in fact she might have been unable to tell which one it was or sincerely believed it was her husband. Suppose she had sex with her husband 40 weeks before she gave birth and sex with her lover 38 weeks before giving birth. Best guess is the child is her husband's, but babies can be born a couple of weeks early, so

And it doesn't seem unreasonable to think she might have done one or two more, such as concealing the knowledge of who the biological father probably was.

And yes, I am deliberately not using the word nefarious. To me, that's a bit too damning a word.

It's not unreasonable to think she might have. But it is unreasonable to assume she did.

Anyhows, tell me about the misogyny. That's actually the only part of toni's post I quoted (from a reply to me), and the specific, relevant word that prompted my WTF, the WTF you then apparently couldn't parse for some odd reason.

Perhaps I had trouble parsing it because of the way you spelled it.

We don't know what she knew about who impregnated her, and there's no particular reason to assume the worst. It may be that she really did knowingly lie to the guy in the OP. Or it may be she didn't know he wasn't the father until the child started to grow and a resemblance to her lover became apparent. Without evidence to sway us in one direction or the other, what accounts for people being swayed to the conclusion that she acted in bad faith? Is it a need to blame someone for a bad outcome? Or is it belief in Biblical notions about a woman's fundamental character?

 

[Metaphor]

None of that suggests that you have thought things through, or that whatever solution you have in mind produces better outcomes on average than current Finnish law - even if we agree that the latter misdelievered in this one case.

Jokodo, I responded to all your questions and laid out some of what I considered to be important foundations for a family law framework. I detailed what I thought was wrong with the Finnish law and the unsatisfactory result from it. If that does not suggest to you that I've 'thought things through', I don't know what would satisfy you that I had.

 

[Jokodo]

None of that suggests that you have thought things through, or that whatever solution you have in mind produces better outcomes on average than current Finnish law - even if we agree that the latter misdelievered in this one case.

Jokodo, I responded to all your questions and laid out some of what I considered to be important foundations for a family law framework. I detailed what I thought was wrong with the Finnish law and the unsatisfactory result from it. If that does not suggest to you that I've 'thought things through', I don't know what would satisfy you that I had.

Well the fact that you've made contradictory statements alone shows you haven't. You can't have something not done automatically and also not decided on a case by case basis, that alone is a contradiction.

 

[Metaphor]

We have evidence she did one dishonest thing. Apparently she embezzled money from her employer.

We have no evidence she knew who the father of her child was before the child was born. You are assuming she knew when in fact she might have been unable to tell which one it was or sincerely believed it was her husband. Suppose she had sex with her husband 40 weeks before she gave birth and sex with her lover 38 weeks before giving birth. Best guess is the child is her husband's, but babies can be born a couple of weeks early, so

She was dishonest. It could not be clearer.

* She knew before the child was born that there was a possibility that her husband was not the father.
* She knew that her husband believed, and had every reason to believe, that he would think he was the father. The evidence for this is that he was shocked and devastated to find out he was not, in fact, the father.
* She did not inform him of the possibility that he was not the father before the birth.

It does not matter that she did not know for sure. It matters only that she had more information than the husband, and withheld that information.

She was dishonest. Hell, even without the paternity question we know she was dishonest, because she had an affair that she withheld form her husband.

How can you say that her above actions were not dishonest?

 

[Metaphor]

None of that suggests that you have thought things through, or that whatever solution you have in mind produces better outcomes on average than current Finnish law - even if we agree that the latter misdelievered in this one case.

Jokodo, I responded to all your questions and laid out some of what I considered to be important foundations for a family law framework. I detailed what I thought was wrong with the Finnish law and the unsatisfactory result from it. If that does not suggest to you that I've 'thought things through', I don't know what would satisfy you that I had.

Well the fact that you've made contradictory statements alone shows you haven't. You can't have something not done automatically and also not decided on a case by case basis, that alone is a contradiction.

The statements are not contradictory, Jokodo. There is no contradiction between rejecting the rule 'bio father's demands automatically nullify social father's status' and stating that this does not entail 'the courts should decide on a case by case basis'. One does simply not follow from the other.

For example, one rule I would have is something like this. "If the child was the result of an act of statutory rape on the bio father by the birth mother, the State shall never enter an order of child support against the bio father for that child." That isn't letting the courts decide on a case-by-case basis. It's laying out the rules. Courts will enforce those rules.

 

[Jokodo]

Well the fact that you've made contradictory statements alone shows you haven't. You can't have something not done automatically and also not decided on a case by case basis, that alone is a contradiction.

The statements are not contradictory, Jokodo. There is no contradiction between rejecting the rule 'bio father's demands automatically nullify social father's status' and stating that this does not entail 'the courts should decide on a case by case basis'. One does simply not follow from the other.

If it's not automatic, a decision based on the case has to be reached by someone. Who do you suggest that someone should be if not the courts?

 

[Metaphor]

Well the fact that you've made contradictory statements alone shows you haven't. You can't have something not done automatically and also not decided on a case by case basis, that alone is a contradiction.

The statements are not contradictory, Jokodo. There is no contradiction between rejecting the rule 'bio father's demands automatically nullify social father's status' and stating that this does not entail 'the courts should decide on a case by case basis'. One does simply not follow from the other.

If it's not automatic, a decision based on the case has to be reached by someone. Who do you suggest that someone should be if not the courts?

The courts enforcing rules set out in legislation.

EDITED: In cases where voluntary agreement between the parties is not reached. For example, I would not expect the courts to intervene if a boy voluntarily gave his rapist child support payments. But the State could never enter an order against the boy to mandate them.

 

[Jokodo]

If it's not automatic, a decision based on the case has to be reached by someone. Who do you suggest that someone should be if not the courts?

The courts enforcing rules set out in legislation.

Exactly, which is a contradiction to what you said before, and no different from the situation currently holding in Finland or elsewhere, or is it?

 

[ruby sparks]

We have evidence she did one dishonest thing. Apparently she embezzled money from her employer.

I have to stop you just there. Two questions.

1. Do you not consider a 3-year long secret affair, no matter which partner in any relationship does it, to involve being dishonest, and on a regular, ongoing basis to boot (not just a one-off)?
2. Would you like a WTF? Sorry, but I literally can't understand why you didn't count the affair. You even bolded the word 'one'. Could you, in all seriousness, explain that to me?

No one is saying it was evil. Not even the embezzlement would be that, imo. We're only talking about dishonesty.

 

[ruby sparks]

It's not unreasonable to think she might have. But it is unreasonable to assume she did.

But toni was replying to me, and I was not assuming it.

And furthermore, it wouldn't necessarily have been misogyny if someone did assume it, though it would be unwarranted, and misogyny might be one candidate explanation.

Imo, the use of the term misogyny was uncalled for in the thread. Even metaphor, for all his beefs and biases about gender politics, is clearly not a misogynist.

Now I'm half expecting toni to come in with one of her regular "I wonder why men go nuts just because a woman says....?"

I have my answer ready just in case. Its, "toni, sometimes, it's because what you have said is actually not reasonable".

 

[ruby sparks]

We don't know what she knew about who impregnated her, and there's no particular reason to assume the worst.

You are right. There is no good reason to assume. However, as I said, the woman knows the times she had sex with the lover, and has some idea of when she got pregnant, and perhaps crucially in this case, she apparently couldn't previously get pregnant with the husband, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to speculate that way. And technically, she must at least have known it might not be the husband's, but didn't come clean, so that's not honesty, at that point or thereafter until the truth came out a year or so later, even if we might find ways to at least go easy on her about it, temporarily taking it that she was not trying to get pregnant with the lover.

And personally, I think going for the husband's money for a child that she by then knew was not his is a bit off, even if as it turns out it is legal. As was going for sole custody. Though even with that, we don't know all the story. But the husband has said he wanted access. But perhaps the court had reasons to deny him it.

Is it a need to blame someone for a bad outcome? Or is it belief in Biblical notions about a woman's fundamental character?

Interesting questions. I don't know. But personally, I have tried to retain caveats. I said that we don't know why she embarked on the affair in the first place for instance. That can happen for many reasons, and often it's to do with both parties in one way or another. Or, as I said (and I'm speculating) her not being able to conceive with the husband may have played some part (perhaps not even consciously or deliberately). I would not assume that. It just seems to be a coincidence in this particular case that both things were happening during approximately the same timeframe.

I would bet money that none of the parties in this, including her lover, are inherently bad people. Imo there are very, very few inherently bad people in this world, if any. But I would tend to be more critical of the woman, or to be exact her actions, based only on what we know. And I honestly think that's a fair, if provisional, position.

As to the husband? Well. Hm. He has behaved less than perfectly, for sure. But I can see how he might be coming from a place of great and genuine pain, and so I am inclined to allow for that. Obviously, it could be that there are things we don't know at this point.

I also have a mini-theory about psychological differences between the sexes when it comes to issues around becoming a parent, but that's maybe a controversial discussion for another day. You'll be glad to know my theory does not involve goodies and baddies.

 

[laughing dog]

None of that suggests that you have thought things through, or that whatever solution you have in mind produces better outcomes on average than current Finnish law - even if we agree that the latter misdelievered in this one case.

No need to think things through - a man was treated unfairly, ultimately by a woman, so the "WAAAAH" machine gets turned on.

 

[laughing dog]

For some reason, you are under the delusion that posters are either required to read every one of your posts or that they are required to respond to your idiotic questions.

You are required to do neither and I never suggested otherwise.

No one is that obtuse: you pester posters by name to answer you.

I have done no such thing. I have not argued for or against the Finnish law. The biological father appears legally off the hook because the sperm donor is not the legal father. As far as I am concerned, this is a matter of Finnish law for the Finnish people to address. I realize you feel you are the supreme arbiter of what is moral and what is proper, but you are not. The Finns have their own history, culture and society - it is up to them to develop, enact and enforce laws that fit their culture and history, not yours.
Your dodge is noted.

Clearly "dodge" means something different in Australia. I bolded and italicized my clear response to your question. Why do you ask questions when you are either incapable of understanding them or cannot be bothered to read them?

I'm not interested in what the Finnish law is.

Obviously, why bother to know what you are raving about?

I asked what you thought. And you've neglected to answer.

You are mistaken.

 

[ruby sparks]

Is it a need to blame someone for a bad outcome? Or is it belief in Biblical notions about a woman's fundamental character?

I think these are worth a better attempted answer.

To the first, I'd say, yes, that's very common, humans seem to love apportioning blame to and judging other humans, but it's commonly applied to and by both genders. Generally I mean, not just in scenarios such as this. You can even see it in this thread. Toni used the word 'monster' for the husband. Derec called the woman a slut. Jarhyn was very judgemental of both parties, imo. I can't say how much it has influenced opinions generally however.

As to whether women get blamed more readily, again I don't know. One would hope that on a secular forum, biblical influences would be few and far between, but I accept that there are those, possibly many (outside this forum I mean), who would seek to blame women more than men, and others, again possibly many, who would lean the other way. It is not uncommon, for example, for married men to be thought of as cheating or potentially cheating shits, and that if a woman has an affair, her man can be viewed as probably having given her good reason to resort to it. Nearly everyone knows the first lines of a very famous poem by heart ("sugar and spice and all things nice...").

All that said, women fearing that they are more harshly judged in such scenarios is imo very understandable. By the same token I think men have reason to fear the divorce/custody courts. And by golly women have reason to worry about fair treatment at rape trials. As someone who had a close and loving mother, two sisters, two daughters and a wife, I am under what I hope are relatively few male illusions about many of the ways women's characters are impugned in sexual or relationship situations, though as a man I will certainly never be able to appreciate a woman's position fully or at first hand (and this is probably true in reverse for women understanding the male predicament). I just don't think that's what's happening here, and I don't think this is the best example in which to either defend or perhaps even give the benefit of the doubt to the actions of the woman more than the man. In many other situations, it would be, imo. Without necessarily condemning either outright as a human being, obviously. There's few things as complicated as intimate human relationships, and all of us are flawed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Of course there is a justification - Trausti gave it. It is a justification you don't like it.

IMO, the notion of no time limit is linked to the notion that a child is basically no more than a financial liability.

So it's better to pick one victim to screw badly than to spread the burden?

Thanks for confirming that you view the child as purely a financial liability.

Thank you for ignoring the fact that I have clearly stated that I think visitation should be a completely separate issue and based on the parental role--removing the financial aspect should not change this.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Several people in this thread have made the proposition that legal parenthood should be *automatically* anulled when it turns out the man who accepted fatherhood on the premise that is the biological father is not in fact the biological father. Have you really thought this through? Does it work both ways?

I mean, I have two kids aged 10 and 2, and I love those and believe I've earned myself a place in their life. If either of them turned out not to be biologically mine, I may be angry at their mother for lying to me but I'd certainly want to continue to play a role in their life. Under your proposal, I'd have no basis to claim even as much as visitation rights, right? Is that what you want?

That does not describe my position--I think visitation should follow from having been in the parental role for a sufficient period of time (even in a case where from the start everyone knows he's not the father) and I consider it a completely separate issue from child support.

Well that's just cherry picking. In most jurisdictions (all I know of) visitation rights are tied
To being a legal parent. The legal concept of "person-with-all-the rights and none of the duties of a father" doesn't exist, either you are a legal parents (which is only partially determined by whether your a biological parent), or you are not. I'm not it should exist either. We can talk about extending visitation rights to other groups of people who are not parents, but unless that discussion includes enforceable visitation rights for half and step siblings, grandparents, maybe even former nannies, it's picking out the raisins for one group and one group only, which is a textbook example of discrimination.

I wouldn't call it cherry picking--I'm saying they are separate issues. I do agree that my position doesn't align with the law--I'm saying the law should be changed.