When there is no guilty party to pin it on the taxpayers end up with the bill. I consider that far superior to picking an innocent and sticking them with the bill.
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Finnish man ordered by court to pay alimony for a child resulting from his wife cheating: this week in the strange death of Europe
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When there is no guilty party to pin it on the taxpayers end up with the bill. I consider that far superior to picking an innocent and sticking them with the bill.
I don't see how being in a relationship with someone confers an obligation about something not in the relationship. She should not be able to choose to incur obligations for him. When it became apparent she was trying to he objected--costs already incurred are one thing, but she shouldn't be able to stick him with any future bills. (Note that a division of property is not a bill.)
laughing dog
Contributor
The taxpayers are innocent. In this case, the man is the legal father.
T.G.G. Moogly
Traditional Atheist
Kids are the more important bill, more important than her running up umpteen thousands of credit card bills, bills he would be obliged to pay. There really isn't any difference between the two "bills" except that one confers moral obligations. His defense is he's a stupid, innocent, butthurt spouse. I believe him.
Yes, someone will pick up the tab, and it should start with the people who consented to becoming parents.
Jayjay
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I think we're going around in circles. Consent could be either some sort of explicit choice, but it could also be implicit, if a person sticks to a particular role for long enough time. Legally the latter is a gray area: how long does a person have to fulfill the role of a social father, until it becomes "consent"? In the case under scrutiny in this thread, the husband continued in that role for about seven months after finding out he wasn't the biological father. Was he "consenting" or not? From his point of view, he didn't. But a case could be made that by dragging out the decision as long as he did, he was giving consent.
What if, he had stuck with the situation for a year before filing for annulment? Or two years, five years? What if he had done so only after a divorce and when the woman asked for child support? Would that have been in the interest of the child?
Legally being a parent doesn't mean having feelings of any kind, or raising a child. It's certain rights and obligations, such as the possibility of having to pay child support.
EDITED TO ADD: As a side note, the Finnish law will probably be changed soon to take into account same sex marriages. No idea how they will formulate these rules to be gender neutral.
Jayjay
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Just to clarify, that $380 number was just my estimate of what a single mother would be entitled to get in benefits if there was no father to pay for child support. It is not relevant to the case.
The actual numbers in this case, if anyone is interested, is that the woman requested the man to pay €485 per month until the child turns 18. At the time, he was 5, so that's about slightly less than 13 years.
The amount is based on an estimated total of €768 euros per month of what the child is entitled to. €485 was the father's part of it; the remainder is legally the mother's share. So it's NOT true that the "Finnish law and feminists" would only consider the man's obligations. It's just that the mother's obligations in this case are meaningless because she is also the custodian and it would make no sense for her to write a check to herself.
The court lowered the actual amount that the man has to pay to €308 per month, detailed reasoning for which I don't know. The man conceded to the court that this is within his ability to pay. That could of course change if he loses his job, but then he would have to challenge the court decision again. That being said the total is about €50k.
I've answered this question a dozen times. He never gave consent in the first place. There's nothing to withdraw and no "time limit".
And he should not have that obligation, because he never consented to being a parent.
The law is stupid in this case.
He can stop the credit card bleed any time he wants to by divorce or separation.
laughing dog
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My point is that you are fine with sticking innocents with the bill.
Jayjay
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It wouldn't be fair to the child, if a father who "never consented" can walk away from a relationship any time he wants with no obligations. Suppose the couple stays together for 5 years, and then divorce. Woman files for child support, and the man responds by filing for annulment. The end result is that a biological father who never knew the child is now suddenly on the hook for the child support payments. I don't see how that is fair either.
Yes, that's how it should be. That's how consent works.
No, that isn't the end result. I have already stated that family law needs to be changed. A child can be created without any consent from a bio father to be a bio father.
It isn't fair to the bio father if he was never told he was a bio father. He's already missed out on multiple years of his child's development if he was never told.
If he was told, but wanted nothing to do with the child at the time, then he exercised his right to a financial abortion. He shouldn't be on the hook then, either.
Jayjay
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Works fine for the dads who don't want to pay, but that leaves some rare cases where the kid doesn't get a support it needs.
A) social fathers who are not biological fathers get off the hook because they didn't "consent".
B) biological fathers who are not social fathers get off the hook because they did a "financial abortion"
C) social and biological fathers... well, that's the normal situation. They are obligated to pay child support always.
That leaves kids who have a different social father than a biological father without mandatory child support in case of a breakup.
Any father, or indeed any person, who did not consent, but nevertheless wants to provide support, is of course free to do so.
But if a mother deliberately orchestrated not having a consenting father, the law ought not pick some individual man and pretend he is a consenting father.
Jayjay
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Voluntary support is a no-brainer. It doesn't require any laws, because there is no dispute.
If a father stays with a child for several months or years after finding out he is not the father, then I would say that he is consenting.
ruby sparks
Contributor
I personally would not say several months. Years, yes.
After that, a man can leave, yes, obviously, but he has arguably created an obligation to pay (or do) at least something towards the welfare of the child he has fathered for those years, in this case knowing the biological paternity is not his.
It's not what I would call ideal, it's still hard on cuckolded dads imo, but it seems reasonable. Why I say it is still hard on cuckolded dads is because the implied consent we are talking about is probably given under at least some duress and difficulty in most cases. I'm not saying all.
And I think it would require certain actions by the mother in order to work well for, and be what I would call fair on, all those involved. Contrition would help, for example. Swiftly ending the infidelity. Assurances of commitment to the husband. Etc.* Mending the marital relationship in other words. If on the other hand the marriage is still fractured, I am not sure staying is in the best interests of anyone, including the child. If the marriage can be healed, even if that takes time, then that is the ideal situation. Something akin to mediation or counselling would probably be very useful here, but imo it would need both partners to be fully on board with trying.
And just to get back to the OP, this man only stayed 2 months after the truth came out, I think. In the immediate aftermath, he moved out to stay with a co-worker (we don't know if that would or wouldn't have been permanent, but she filed for divorce soon after, making a return more unlikely, even if he was considering it). I myself would not call 'seeing the child from time to time', especially in that situation, as qualifying as 'staying'. It could be argued, but I'd say it was a stretch.
In other words, I don't think the husband in this particular case did meaningfully consent, even in the implied way we are talking about here, because he didn't stay.
The legal time limit clock was still running after he moved out though. There may be a case for saying that it should have stopped earlier, either when he moved out or when she filed for divorce. But that is not the law as it stands.
* Obviously, if a husband is partly to blame for creating the circumstances, say by previously mistreating or neglecting his wife or behaving unreasonably, then both of them ideally, and in the interests of the child (and their own interests), need to take these actions towards each other, imo, if they are to go forward as a family.
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Jokodo
Veteran Member
If only there were a way to ensure that they can't threaten him to take him to court over this, to bring him into a she-said-he-said situation where he might end up having to pay if the jury doesn't believe him. Like, I don't know, some kind of rule that says that if the mother's husband continues to act as the father in the full knowledge that he isn't the biological father, that'll be considered as implicit consent and to being a father complete with the obligations that entails. Something like a legal assumption that a person who continues to act like a dad in the knowledge that he isn't the bio-dad wants to be a legal dad, coupled with a time limit that prevents you from backpedalling on this decision in the arbitrarily distant future.
Well, I'd advise Tom to put things in writing. An email is more than sufficient (and an email trail is the best kind of evidence). Nevertheless, it doesn't matter in this case if it's in writing.
But you just said John and Mary are going to lie about it. Like, they "found out" recently that Tom was the father. If they tell the jury that they knew five years ago, and John continued to be the social father, J&M are outing themselves as liars.
If John and Mary are going to tell the jury they just found out, Tom can say he wants a financial abortion (because he, too, must have just found out). That's it. Tom didn't consent to being a social father.
If instead John and Mary say 'we knew for five years and we didn't tell Tom', then Tom can have the financial abortion when he finds out. He didn't consent to being a social father.
If instead John and Mary lie and say 'we knew for five years and we tried to pursue Tom privately for child support and he didn't co-operate', they'd have to produce evidence of that. Since they didn't do that, and it's difficult to fabricate evidence backwards in time, they're going to have a hard time convincing a jury.
ruby sparks
Contributor
I would not be averse to saying that the outcomes of divorce cases involving children tend to favour the mothers.
A caveat would be that it is not, I think, happening as much as or to the same degree as it was, even 30-40 years ago, at least in many places, such as Western Europe for example. My other caveat is that it is often the reasonable approach. I would be of the opinion that mothers, generally I mean, are the more loving, sacrificing parents.
The other thing that tends to happen is that if there's a family home that is owned rather than rented, the woman is, I think, more likely to get to keep it (for a family home). Which again, can make sense, if she is caring for the children.
Dads, well, there is an area of downtown Belfast that my wife used to call Sad Dadland. It's mostly anonymous, high rise blocks of small, one and 2 bed apartments (apartment living is not the norm here). This is where many divorced and separated dads go to, apparently. The upside is that city centre locations have great internet access and are close to nightlife, so after an appropriate period of getting over the pain of a marital breakdown, going on tinder andinflicting yourself on meeting up with other women in the nearby bars and restaurants is a breeze. Men tend to move on quicker than women, and of course the woman is often too busy juggling work and family life to have as much energy or freedom. Plus, having kids in tow is not usually seen as an asset for a woman seeking a new partner. In my experience, and for a variety of understandable reasons, many divorced or separated mothers postpone getting into a new committed relationship until they have raised the children.
Away from specific instances, one can generalise that there is often an upside, for many men, to being at least more 'free to go', even if it involves making child support payments.
A caveat would be that it is not, I think, happening as much as or to the same degree as it was, even 30-40 years ago, at least in many places, such as Western Europe for example. My other caveat is that it is often the reasonable approach. I would be of the opinion that mothers, generally I mean, are the more loving, sacrificing parents.
The other thing that tends to happen is that if there's a family home that is owned rather than rented, the woman is, I think, more likely to get to keep it (for a family home). Which again, can make sense, if she is caring for the children.
Dads, well, there is an area of downtown Belfast that my wife used to call Sad Dadland. It's mostly anonymous, high rise blocks of small, one and 2 bed apartments (apartment living is not the norm here). This is where many divorced and separated dads go to, apparently. The upside is that city centre locations have great internet access and are close to nightlife, so after an appropriate period of getting over the pain of a marital breakdown, going on tinder and
Away from specific instances, one can generalise that there is often an upside, for many men, to being at least more 'free to go', even if it involves making child support payments.
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