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]

In this case. It's also obvious in other cases, Metaphor's sketch of a system will deliver unjust outcomes.

Really? Explain an unjust scenario under the rules I proposed.

Well since the rules you have proposed remains blissfully vague, that involves some guesswork. That's your problem though, not mine.

That said, I have presented what believe to be such scenarios, you dodged the question every time.

I did not. I said 'the bio father declaring his fatherhood will not automatically nullify he social father's claims'.

I answered all your scenarios. You are being dishonest.

 

[Metaphor]

Obviously you are ignorant about the facts, since the man is ordered to pay child support of the equivalent of $380 per month not maintenance or alimony. &24 Euros is aroud $840 at the current exchange. Adding the two yields about $1,220 per month or about $14,640 per year. I don't know about Finland, but that is not much for a two person household to live on in the US.

No, it isn't much for a two person household to live on, but the unemployment benefit is the very least of the welfare. There may be additional forms of welfare, including subsidised or free child care. Why do you assume a single mother is unable to work?

Also, why do you believe the father's child support replaced the state support, and why do you believe the father's support is 380 per month? If the amount has been revealed in an article, please direct me to it.

 

[Metaphor]

The wife...then rejects the child who is not her own?

She might.

Divorces her husband and refuses to see the child?

She might.

Refuses to pay support for this child?

Are, here's the rub. Would Finnish law force her to pay child support for a child that is not her own? I don't know.

Also monstrous and also, one would hope, not allowed by Finnish law.

The Finnish law cannot force her to love the child, remain married, and continue to act as a mother to the child. It really can't. Even if Finnish law forced visitation, it could not direct the proceedings or force the mother to feel a certain way.

And I do not know what the Finnish law says about cuckquean maternity and responsibility. I do not know if she would be forced to pay child support.

 

[Arctish]

I would like to see your evidence regarding false rape accusations. Are you using that FBI report that's been cited here a number of times in the past few years? Because it doesn't support that claim at all.

The FBI numbers say nothing about wrongful convictions. It's a crime for which a wrongful conviction will almost never be exposed, we do not know how many there are!

I would like to see your evidence regarding this claim. What's your source?

More about the Duke case:

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Re: Crystal Magnum: I'm putting this behind HIDE tags because it's a potential derail but I think it needs to be addressed.

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You know as well as I do that the responsibility for members of the Duke Lacrosse team being charged with rape lies with District Attorney Mike Nifong, who took the unsupported and ever changing story of a drugged and drunk woman with a documented history of mental health problems, and exploited it for political reasons, an act for which he was removed, disbarred and jailed.

You know Magnum has mental health problems and was intoxicated from mixing beer and prescription drugs. You know the cops who responded to the call about her that night took her straight to a mental-health and substance-abuse facility for involuntary commitment because she was so clearly in need of mental health care. You know Nifong had no evidence to support charging the Duke students but did so anyway and then conspired to hide exculpatory evidence. And you know about the argument between the strippers and the Duke students and the guy with the broomstick who wanted to shove it up inside one or both of them. And yet you keep making the absurd claim that Crystal Magnum knowingly and maliciously accused innocent boys and the poor deluded District Attorney was hoodwinked into going along with her nefarious plot.

Those students were dragged through the mud and had their college careers upended because a man hatched a nefarious plot against them.

It was a woman who made the nefarious claims. It was a man who went with them for political reasons. She bears greater guilt than he does.

It was a woman undergoing a mental health crisis so obvious the cops immediately took her to a mental health facility so she could receive the care she needed. You have no idea what she truly believed was happening while in that state. I've worked with enough mentally ill people to know their perception of reality can be very skewed at times. It's not something they choose, it's something they experience.

The person who knowingly and deliberately peddled a false narrative about the Duke lacrosse team players was District Attorney Mike Nifong. You know, the guy who whose conduct in that case was so shockingly bad that he was brought up on ethics charges and ultimately disbarred.

If you and Derec really want people who tell false stories about rape to be punished, why do you have such a hard time remembering that's how the Duke case ended? Why is it always "remember Crystal Magnum", not "remember Mike Nifong"?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Responsibility requires something to be responsible for. If he's not the father where's the obligation for him to be responsible for?

I thought he was the spouse of someone who gave birth. My bad.

 

[Toni]

What a fucking huge load of bullshit.

I've said more than once that the woman behaved badly. We have no idea if the man also cheated or if he also has children outside of the marriage. We know that the wife cheated and the child she bore ultimately was proven not to be her husband's. We don't even know how this information came to be known. We don't know if she, in very good faith, believed the child to be her husband's child or hoped that the child was her husband's or if she knew that leaving her husband for her lover was an impossibility for X reasons and chose to deliberately deceive her husband. We do not know.

What I have said is that the man failed to challenge paternity within the generous 2 year time frame that Finnish law allows and so, by Finnish law, he is legally obligated to act financially as though he were the child's genetic parent and pay support for said child.

The child is more than 2 years old and has already established a child/father relationship with the husband. It is cruel to the child to have the legal father now reject the child because he is justifiably angry with the child's mother and divorced her. I understand the husband's anger and hurt and anguish, even. He has a choice of whether or not to maintain a father/child relationship with the child but Finnish law mandates that he maintain a legal/financial relationship. Personally, I think it is monstrous to reject a child who is proven not to carry your genetic material, particularly when you have already established a relationship with that child and maintained such for over two years.

Now, if the circumstances are different than presented in the article in the OP: The woman abandoned her husband after learning of her pregnancy or soon after and the child never grew up knowing the husband as his father, then the monstrous behavior isn't monstrous and I would go so far as to say that Finnish law is perhaps wrong here. The only uncertainty is that it was more than 2 years before the husband challenged the paternity. Two years is a long time, actually.

At what point can a parent decide to reject a child who is proven to not be their genetically? Before birth: I would agree. The genetic parent reunites with the other genetic parent? Yes. The genetic parent/non-genetic parent raise the child to 2 or 5 or 10 or 17 or whatever age and then the nongenetic parent decides that they've been fooled and reject not only the at fault other parent but the child? That's monstrous. It seems that after a prolonged relationship between false father and child, Finnish law would mandate that the rejecting parent still be responsible for support of the child.

Suppose this: A man has a wife and a mistress on the side. Both women become pregnant around the same time and by a twist of fate, end up in the same hospital delivering at the same time. The husband has told the mistress that he will not leave his wife. She has decided, and he agreed, to place the child for adoption. The wife, meanwhile, has an extremely difficult delivery, delivers by emergency c section and the child is born dead or born with complications and dies a short time later, the wife never having a chance to bond with the child. The husband decides to present his child with his mistress to his wife as the wife's own child and she raises that child to age 2 or whatever age. The truth comes out. The wife...then rejects the child who is not her own? Divorces her husband and refuses to see the child? Refuses to pay support for this child? Also monstrous and also, one would hope, not allowed by Finnish law.

It would have helped if you'd at least got the facts as far as we know them right. It was the wife who reportedly instigated divorce proceedings. She also later filed for sole custody. The husband stated that he wanted to continue to see the child. This has all been said in the thread.

Can you point to me where I said differently?

 

[Toni]

Sure the "woman did bad". But the man did have a window of opportunity to fix it. He failed to do so. So while it does seem unfair, the law isn't that bad.

As background, here is a more detailed time table of events:

January 2016: The man finds out about the wife's infidelity and that he is not the father. Apparently the wife still had a relationship with the biological father, and had done so for the past three years. It's not clear how long after the incident this continued though.

March 2016: The man moves out of the house.

April 2016: The wife files for divorce.

May 2016: The man gets the DNA test results.

June 2016: The child turns 2 years old.

August 2016: The man files for annulment.

It seems that the man was distraught over the news (he started seeing a therapist who later would testify him having PTSD symptoms), and it really came to him as a surprise. At the time, according to his own words, he was still hoping to have some relationship with the child, which probably contributed to his tardiness. The woman on the other hand was later convicted in an unrelated case of embezzling her employer, so my gut feeling is that the man here is being sincere and the woman is in it for the money. From legal standpoint though, being a crybaby isn't a reason to miss deadlines, and there is no proof that she deliberately defrauded the man. Infidelity is not a crime.

Thank you for the extra detail.

I would now be even more of the opinion that things have been unfair on the man, and I would have more sympathy with him. Why use the word crybaby? Is he, in your opinion, supposed to be more of a ‘man’, or something?

Where's the source of this information?

 

[Toni]

To the posters who think Derec and Metaphor are wrong with regards to the OP I ask you this serious question. What reason do men have for getting married today? What good does that institution do for any of them?

And for any women who happen to be in this thread I would ask them this. Do you really want all the men of today to regard you as pump and dump entertainment with no regard to lasting wife material? Because if marriage and fidelity are totally lost in today's society that is all that is left.

Believe it or not, a lot of women prefer not to get married. Believe it or not, a lot of women thing much more of themselves than as 'pump and dump' material. Believe it or not, more men than women commit adultery, in the US. Believe it or not, women are much more capable of raising children on their own than they were 50 years ago because they are now able to earn more money. Believe it or not, people often form committed relationships and even marriages without the expectation of there ever being children.

Believe it or not but a lot of women look at their choices of male partners and say no thanks.

 

[laughing dog]

The child is not a perpetrator, so the award of child support does not reward the perpetrator.

The woman is the perpetrator and she's rewarded by money that she now doesn't have to earn.

If you ignore that fact this is CHILD SUPPORT that is supposed to go to SUPPORT THE CHILD, you have an excellent point.

 

[laughing dog]

Obviously you are ignorant about the facts, since the man is ordered to pay child support of the equivalent of $380 per month not maintenance or alimony. &24 Euros is aroud $840 at the current exchange. Adding the two yields about $1,220 per month or about $14,640 per year. I don't know about Finland, but that is not much for a two person household to live on in the US.

No, it isn't much for a two person household to live on, but the unemployment benefit is the very least of the welfare. There may be additional forms of welfare, including subsidised or free child care. Why do you assume a single mother is unable to work?

You are the one who brought the unemployment, not me. Why do you assume that the child will automatically be sufficiently provided for?

Also, why do you believe the father's child support replaced the state support, and why do you believe the father's support is 380 per month? If the amount has been revealed in an article, please direct me to it.

I added the child support to the number you gave. I got the number for one of Jayjay's posts.

 

[Metaphor]

You are the one who brought the unemployment, not me.

If the mother were employed, even at a third of the average monthly Finnish salary, then it seems to me the child would be sufficiently provided for.

But whether she is employed or not, I think the bio father should pay child support and not the cuckolded husband.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I would like to see your evidence regarding this claim. What's your source?

My point is that we wouldn't expect to have many exonerations, thus the absence of exonerations says nothing about the accuracy of the original convictions.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Responsibility requires something to be responsible for. If he's not the father where's the obligation for him to be responsible for?

I thought he was the spouse of someone who gave birth. My bad.

So? That should not confer any obligation. Paternity should incur an obligation.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The child is not a perpetrator, so the award of child support does not reward the perpetrator.

The woman is the perpetrator and she's rewarded by money that she now doesn't have to earn.

If you ignore that fact this is CHILD SUPPORT that is supposed to go to SUPPORT THE CHILD, you have an excellent point.

She gets child support from the deep pockets rather than the actual father. Want child support, go after the actual father!

 

[Arctish]

I would like to see your evidence regarding this claim. What's your source?

My point is that we wouldn't expect to have many exonerations, thus the absence of exonerations says nothing about the accuracy of the original convictions.

Or, considering the myriad obstacles to successfully prosecuting a rape case, we can expect that the ones which resulted in a conviction had solid supporting evidence justifying the verdict, therefore we can expect exonerations to be rare.

Anyway, I would still like to see your source. Perhaps there's some good information in there.

 

[laughing dog]

If you ignore that fact this is CHILD SUPPORT that is supposed to go to SUPPORT THE CHILD, you have an excellent point.

She gets child support from the deep pockets rather than the actual father. Want child support, go after the actual father!

On what basis do you know who has the deep pockets?

 

[Jokodo]

Well since the rules you have proposed remains blissfully vague, that involves some guesswork. That's your problem though, not mine.

That said, I have presented what believe to be such scenarios, you dodged the question every time.

I did not. I said 'the bio father declaring his fatherhood will not automatically nullify he social father's claims'.

I answered all your scenarios. You are being dishonest.

I'm pretty sure you didn't answer my scenarios. You may have said something like "well, that would be unfair, of course it wouldn't happen under my system because what I'm proposing is a fair system" - but that's not an answer, that's hand waiving in how vague it is. What's missing is a set of rules that produce the right outcome. You still owe us that.

Here's a couple more scenarios, or more explicit expositions of the ones brought up before:

• John and Mary have an open marriage. That means, John knows and approves that Mary occasionally hooks up with Tom, under the strict provision they always use condoms. One day, Tom and Mary's condom breaks, which she immediately confesses to John. When later they learn Mary is pregnant all three sit down on a table. They know there is a chance that Tom is the father, but decide to just assume John is and never go through the complicated route of having a paternity test, and having John adopt the child should it be Tom's - and more than anyone else, Tom is happy about the arrangement as it gets him off the hook. Years later, Tom secretly has a paternity test done, finds that he is indeed the biological father, and decides to use that knowledge to extort money from John and Mary, knowing that going to the court he could easily undermine John's relationship with his 10-year-old daughter.
• John and Mary want children, but John is infertile. Instead of shelling out 1000s or 10,000s of $ to fertility clinics, they decide to help themselves by more traditional means: Mary hooks up a few times with Tom, a mutual friend they trust, until she gets pregnant. Tom has agreed to the terms that he's acting more or less as a sperm donor, but none of this is recorded in writing or notarized. Five years later, John and Mary are pretty broke and decide to go after Tom for child support.
• John and Mary are a couple. One day, Mary is raped by Tom. Since she believes it wold be a he-says-she-says situation and doesn't want to re-ignite the trauma for nothing, Mary doesn't report Tom. When Mary finds she is pregnant, John and Mary know that there is an off chance that the rapist is the father. 10 years later, Tom, the rapist, finds out he may have fathered a child, secretly has a DNA test done, and now demands visitation rights. Given that a 10 year old rape case is even harder to prove and he would just say it was consensual, Mary has no choice but to let her rapist into her house to play with her child on a regular basis.

All of these are from simply dropping any kind of term limit and assuming, as the default, that a legal father (who has not given to protocol that he knows he is not the biological father) wants to skip his parental role and get the bio-dad on the hook when he finds out he's not the biological father. Call it "automatic transfer" or not, but without such an assumption (at least as the default, until and unless we have conflicting declarations from the parties involved), most of your objections collapse.

 

[Metaphor]

Or, considering the myriad obstacles to successfully prosecuting a rape case, we can expect that the ones which resulted in a conviction had solid supporting evidence justifying the verdict, therefore we can expect exonerations to be rare.

Anyway, I would still like to see your source. Perhaps there's some good information in there.

Most of the men exonerated under The Innocence Project were convicted of rape or murder. So it does not seem to me that the cases that resulted in conviction necessarily had 'solid supporting evidence'.

 

[Jayjay]

I am not ignorant of them and you are mistaken about what they imply. Child benefits are in addition to any payments you qualify for without children. An unemployed single mother would not have to survive on 380 euro a month. At the very, very least, they would also qualify for unemployment at around 724 euro a month.

That was 380 dollars. But numbers aside, you are absolutely correct in your interpretation. The child benefit figures I cited were what the child would be eligible for in benefits, regardless of other benefits or income the parent(s) may have. However, I also don't think laughing dog was saying anything different. The benefits are slightly less than the actual average costs of a child (such as food, clothes, daycare, transportation, hobbies, bigger house, etc.), hence a single mother would be financially disadvantaged compared to a childless single woman living alone. Child support is meant to bridge that gap.

Laughing dog said the welfare system was inadequate. I can hardly believe that Finland's welfare system is inadequate, and if it is, then every welfare system ever created must be inadequate.

I am also not surprised that a single mother would be financially worse off than a childless single woman living alone (though even then I don't think that's necessarily the case). Having children entails costs, why should it not?

Of course, single mothers can get jobs too. Average monthly wages in Finland is 3,605 euro, and even if the mother could earn only one third of that, that would be 1,200 euro a month.

It's also worth noting that I never said the father should not have to provide toward the child's material costs of living. I disagree that the obligation falls on the cuckolded husband, however.

Whether there should be child support at all is a separate issue. Even welfare states like those in Finland or other Nordic states usually have some sort of child support laws, and the basic benefits granted by the government don't cover all the costs of the child. No single mother is going to be forced into prostitution or selling their organs, but they will have slightly lower income and therefore less to spend on the child. This is undesirable for two reasons. First, unequal opportunities for the child. It is very desirable to give the kids as even playing field regardless of whether they come from poor or middle-class backgrounds. Second, albeit a less important consideration, is simply to incentivize people to have children. In Finland for example the fertility rate is 1.4, well below the 2.1 required for population replacement.

The downside of generous benefits are of course that it costs money and means more taxes. By pinning some of the responsibility to the biological or social parents eases this burden. Also, if the state were to provide very generous benefits, the incentive for some women to game the system would still be there, the "victim" would just be the society as a whole, not the cuckolded or biological husbands. It's also psychologically easier to leech off money from a faceless bureocrat than a real person, so costs would be higher. Already now certain groups like immigrants to be stigmatized for having lots of "single mothers" on paper, because that's the way you get the highest benefits.

So the tradeoff is how much socialized welfare you want versus people taking care of their own kids. Idealistically the former might sound more appealing to some, but in practice I don't think any country has 100% socialized child support.

In this particular case the sticking point though is not whether there should be child support or not, but rather whether a non-biological father who failed to take measures to protect himself should be on the hook for the child support. Similar thing could be said about biological fathers who might end up paying child support years after the conception took place, even though they don't have any real relationship to the child. The reason why time limits exist is to fix the parents of a child as early as possible to avoid disruption in the child's life. Maybe such arbitrary time limits shouldn't exist or they should be longer.

 

[Jayjay]

The child is not a perpetrator, so the award of child support does not reward the perpetrator.

The woman is the perpetrator and she's rewarded by money that she now doesn't have to earn.

Do you think the woman will use 100% the money for manicures and extravagant hats, instead of the child?