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]

No, as you would know if you actually read my post in good faith. What I'm comparing is the act of accepting a bike you didn't explicitly consent to purchasing and doing all of the things with it a buyer would do and none of the things a person who wants to return it because it's not what he ordered with the act of accepting a child you didn't explicitly consent to raising (i.e. you only ever consented explicitly to raising your own offspring) and doing all of the things a father would do and none of the things a person who doesn't want to be the child's father would do.

If one of those decisions can be made tacitly, through your acts, why not the other? Do you feel only inconsequential decisions should be made tacitly, while more consequential decisions require an explicit, notarized verbalization?

I'm completely bewildered by your analogy. It makes no sense.

A child is not a bike, and not anything like a bike. A bike is a good produced by somebody else and is generally exchanged for money. A child is not a used bike. A decision to continue parenting a child you did not consent to, is consent to parenting it while you are doing it.

Or do you feel the half a year is just too short to deduce a tacit decision from his actions? How long would be long enough? If he stays with the child and mother after finding out the cheated and the child isn't his for another five years, though without ever legally adopting the child, just continuing to act in accordance with the status quo that already makes him the legal father, does he get to dump the child along with the wife if they do break up for a different reason five years later?

Yes.

If he voluntarily goes on to pay child support after the breakup and regularly sees his child, does he get to stop paying (5 years after the breakup and 10 years after he found out the child is not his) when his new girlfriend shows little understanding for him paying for a child that's "not even his"?

Yes.

That's not entirely true. You will be bound by all the residual stipulations of the original contract if you let the two-year-limit slip and continue pretending that you have a contract. For example, if the original contract stipulates (as is commonly the case) that you have to give a 3-month early notice if you want to move out before the contract expires, you'll be bound by that same 3-month notice period. Say, I sign a two-year contract from June 2018 to May 2020 inclusive with an option to get out early with a three-month early notice, and keep paying rent and living in the apartment, if I today tell my landlord I found a new flat and will be out tomorrow, I still have to pay rent for the rest of November and all of December and January/February next year (the current month + 3 full months) - even though I never signed that I wanted to keep the apartment for longer than the May 31, 2020. I'm legally bound by the terms of a contract I never signed - a renewal of our original contract in this case - in all the same ways as if I had signed it.

You didn't sign a contract but you consented to the contract to have a three-month notice period. And, the point is--you can get out. Once you are out, you are not forced to pay for something you don't want and don't use. Are you proposing now that he is obligated to pay child support for three months after he leaves, and that's it?

Now, maybe you have a hard time understanding why an option to bail out early (with a notice period that allows your landlord to find a new tenant to take over when you move out, or to make plans for reconstruction and hire people to do it) makes more sense for home rental than for parenthood, but then maybe you should just think about the difference between the two kind of obligations for like 30 seconds?

....what?

In Australia, if you sign a one year tenancy agreement and move out with no notice on a whim, you are obligated to pay rent until the landlord can find somebody else to rent to (the landlord must make genuine attempts to mitigate her loss).

Imagine instead that you move in, and after three months, you find that nothing in the apartment was as advertised and if you had known that, you never would have signed a lease. So, you move out. You might say they are still obligated to pay until the landlord gets somebody new in, or the next 9 months, whichever is sooner, but it is hardly fair to say you are obligated to pay for 16 years, just because you didn't move out on day one.

Someone who makes a clear decision and sticks to it deserves to have this decision honoured, yes. Whether you call him a psychopath or not.

I find your attitude fundamentally inhumane and frankly such an attitude punishes human frailty and empathy.

Bob and Chris are in the exact same situation. They find out one day that their wife cuckolded them and they are raising somebody's else's genetic offspring.

Bob says 'fuck you, bitch', tells the child never to try to contact him, and leaves after packing a suitcase. It is too much for Bob to either forgive his wife, and he cannot abide the idea that he has spent resources on someone else's offspring. He doesn't have to harden his heart; all the love leaves it instantly.

Chris is deeply hurt by the revelation. He spends a few days wondering what he should do. He consults family. He resolves that his marriage vows are important and he is going to give it six months. He tries to love and forgive his wife. He goes through all the same motions with his daughter but the joy that was once there never returns. After six months, he says to his wife 'it's over, and I'm moving out next month'.

You think Bob's feelings and actions get him off the hook, whereas Chris's attempts at mending and unselfish trial period means he deserves to be on the hook for 16 years.

I find that outcome fundamentally wrong and any law that encourages Bob's actions (which the Finnish law must, as Bob would have gotten out under the 'time limit') and punishes Chris's is a broken law.

If you only answer one thing from this response, I'd like you to answer the above. Do you feel that yes, it's okay, morally right, in fact, for Bob to be off the hook and for Chris to be on the hook?

I imagine that Finnish law, like the laws in other jurisdictions, contains a provision that decisions made under duress or while under incomplete possession of one's mental capacities are not legally binding. Apparently, they found no evidence that this applied when the guy decided to continue fathering his child after finding out she wasn't his genetic offspring.

That did not answer my question at all. I asked if you thought he consented.

 

[ruby sparks]

In the absence of thorough details about the OP case, and without wishing to necessarily interrupt or derail the discussion about it, here is an interesting but different one for comparison purposes, from the Australian High Court, which is similar in some ways, but not all (most notably that the man did not find out about the apparent paternity fraud until after the divorce).

The couple married in 1988 and separated in 1992. Three children were born during the 4-year marriage. Third child was 1 year old at separation. Divorce was finalised in 1998.

Husband (later ex-husband) made Child Support Payments until late 1999, albeit with some interruptions (and thus some arrears).

A DNA test in April 2000 revealed he was not the biological father of the second and third children (biological father is/was the wife's extra-marital lover). Thereafter, the man "became entitled to an adjustment of child support payments to allow for past overpayments, and an extinguishment of arrears".

In 2001 he sued his by then ex-wife for deceit (for 'loss of earnings, loss of use of moneys, personal injury and pain and suffering'). His original case succeeded and he was awarded damages. This was appealed (presumably by the mother) at the High Court of Queensland, and reversed. The reversal was appealed at the High Court of Australia in 2006 by the man (see report below) and failed, it seems on the basis that Family Law does was deemed not extend to cover legal remedies for this sort of deceit (because of an underlying policy of minimising fault).

Note that the appeal judgement here is about the damages for deceit, not about the Child Support Payments specifically. The details of the previous adjustments to Child Support are not given, but the wording above implies that he gained appropriate financial relief, including retrospectively.

Concluding remarks from the second (High Court of Australia) appeal:

"Imposing legal consequences upon behaviour in such a relationship also may be inconsistent with the subjective contemplation of the parties and with public policy as reflected in legislation. In that connection, the extensive scheme of regulation of the legal incidents of the marriage relationship contained in the Family Law Act, based as it is largely upon a policy of minimising the importance of questions of "fault", forms an important part of the setting in which judgments about dishonesty, and actionable damage, must be made. The application of the common law of deceit to marital relations is not impossible, and there are no rigidly defined zones of exclusion, but attempts to construct legal rights and obligations in an unsuitable environment should fail, as did this attempt."

http://eresources.hcourt.gov.au/downloadPdf/2006/HCA/51

The general question brought up by this case is therefore essentially whether a man can sue his partner for paternity fraud (which is different to the question of 'fathering' raised by the OP case), with the court ruling that the success of such suits is 'not impossible' but that the conditions were not met in this case, given the underlying policy of minimising "fault".

 

[Jokodo]

I'm completely bewildered by your analogy. It makes no sense.

A child is not a bike, and not anything like a bike. A bike is a good produced by somebody else and is generally exchanged for money. A child is not a used bike.

and if you were making the case that it should be easier to return a bike after six months than a child, this would be an excellent argument. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you were in the process of making the case that returning a child should be easier.

A decision to continue parenting a child you did not consent to, is consent to parenting it while you are doing it.

How old are you, 13? There is no such thing as consent to being a parent for a limited time. If you agree (as an adult, without duress, while in a clear state of mind, fully aware of all relevant facts) to be a father to a child, you are a father to that child until one of you dies and she has received at least the statutory share of your inheritance (or you of hers if she dies before you). It's not one of those decisions you get to re-evaluate every few months based on how you're feeling this morning and whether the mother still does everything you tell her, and for good reasons. If you are unsure why, try to talk about it with any sane adult you can get access to in real life. You don't get to return an adopted child to the foster home if you find out, after six months, that you were naive about how much work being a parent implies, and I don't see why agreeing to be a father to a child born to your wife (knowing that it's not biologically yours) should be different. Sane adults can be expected to understand that a decision to become a parent isn't one that comes with an option to re-evaluate in a couple months or couples of years even if they no longer feel what they felt once. Why do you want us to treat this man as a child?

You can try and make the argument that he made his decision under duress and/or in a state of mind in which he was unfit to make legally binding concessions, and argue that the court failed to take those factors into account, and you might be right (though we don't really know enough to tell).

Yes.

If he voluntarily goes on to pay child support after the breakup and regularly sees his child, does he get to stop paying (5 years after the breakup and 10 years after he found out the child is not his) when his new girlfriend shows little understanding for him paying for a child that's "not even his"?

Yes.

Well that's just sick.

That's not entirely true. You will be bound by all the residual stipulations of the original contract if you let the two-year-limit slip and continue pretending that you have a contract. For example, if the original contract stipulates (as is commonly the case) that you have to give a 3-month early notice if you want to move out before the contract expires, you'll be bound by that same 3-month notice period. Say, I sign a two-year contract from June 2018 to May 2020 inclusive with an option to get out early with a three-month early notice, and keep paying rent and living in the apartment, if I today tell my landlord I found a new flat and will be out tomorrow, I still have to pay rent for the rest of November and all of December and January/February next year (the current month + 3 full months) - even though I never signed that I wanted to keep the apartment for longer than the May 31, 2020. I'm legally bound by the terms of a contract I never signed - a renewal of our original contract in this case - in all the same ways as if I had signed it.

You didn't sign a contract but you consented to the contract to have a three-month notice period. And, the point is--you can get out.

Yes, because this is about rent and not fatherhood. If you want to make it so that the decision to be a father should always be a tentative one that can be revoked whenever one no longer feels like being a parent, you should say so.

Once you are out, you are not forced to pay for something you don't want and don't use. Are you proposing now that he is obligated to pay child support for three months after he leaves, and that's it?

I didn't know parenthood comes with a three-month notice period.

Can I also suspend it and resume it later? Say I want to go on a five-month sailing cruise in the Caribbean dressed up as a pirate - what do I need to do suspend my parental obligations while I'm away? And are my kids obliged to take me back when I return, or are they free to try find another father in the meantime?

Now, maybe you have a hard time understanding why an option to bail out early (with a notice period that allows your landlord to find a new tenant to take over when you move out, or to make plans for reconstruction and hire people to do it) makes more sense for home rental than for parenthood, but then maybe you should just think about the difference between the two kind of obligations for like 30 seconds?

....what?

In Australia, if you sign a one year tenancy agreement and move out with no notice on a whim, you are obligated to pay rent until the landlord can find somebody else to rent to (the landlord must make genuine attempts to mitigate her loss).

Imagine instead that you move in, and after three months, you find that nothing in the apartment was as advertised and if you had known that, you never would have signed a lease. So, you move out. You might say they are still obligated to pay until the landlord gets somebody new in, or the next 9 months, whichever is sooner,

I don't know enough about the relevant Australian laws to say whether you would be obliged, but I wouldn't it consider fair if so, and find it unlikely that you are bound by contract of the landlord clearly lied to you. The landlord didn't hold up their part of the agreement, so you are not obliged to hold up yours (and can probably sue them for damages, i.e. for getting some of what you payed for the first 3 months back since you never agreed to pay that much for an inferior flat). If however, you decide to ignore the missing features and continue regularly paying rent for six more months, you don't get to move out on a day's notice anymore - your acts demonstrate your decision to consent to the purchase of an inferior flat under the same terms, even if your written contract clearly, the one you signed, clearly is for a different kind of flat.

but it is hardly fair to say you are obligated to pay for 16 years,

That might be because what you agreed to is a one-year rental contract and not a for-life fatherhood.

just because you didn't move out on day one.

Someone who makes a clear decision and sticks to it deserves to have this decision honoured, yes. Whether you call him a psychopath or not.

I find your attitude fundamentally inhumane and frankly such an attitude punishes human frailty and empathy.

Bob and Chris are in the exact same situation. They find out one day that their wife cuckolded them and they are raising somebody's else's genetic offspring.

Bob says 'fuck you, bitch', tells the child never to try to contact him, and leaves after packing a suitcase. It is too much for Bob to either forgive his wife, and he cannot abide the idea that he has spent resources on someone else's offspring. He doesn't have to harden his heart; all the love leaves it instantly.

Chris is deeply hurt by the revelation. He spends a few days wondering what he should do. He consults family. He resolves that his marriage vows are important and he is going to give it six months. He tries to love and forgive his wife. He goes through all the same motions with his daughter but the joy that was once there never returns. After six months, he says to his wife 'it's over, and I'm moving out next month'.

You think Bob's feelings and actions get him off the hook, whereas Chris's attempts at mending and unselfish trial period means he deserves to be on the hook for 16 years.

I find that outcome fundamentally wrong and any law that encourages Bob's actions (which the Finnish law must, as Bob would have gotten out under the 'time limit') and punishes Chris's is a broken law.

If you only answer one thing from this response, I'd like you to answer the above. Do you feel that yes, it's okay, morally right, in fact, for Bob to be off the hook and for Chris to be on the hook?

It is Ok

I imagine that Finnish law, like the laws in other jurisdictions, contains a provision that decisions made under duress or while under incomplete possession of one's mental capacities are not legally binding. Apparently, they found no evidence that this applied when the guy decided to continue fathering his child after finding out she wasn't his genetic offspring.

That did not answer my question at all. I asked if you thought he consented.

ose decisions you get to re-evaluate every few months based on how you're feeling this morning and whether the mother still does everything you tell her, and for good reasons. If you are unsure why, try to talk about it with any sane adult you can get access to in real life. You don't get to return an adopted child to the foster home if you find out, after six months, that you were naive about how much work being a parent implies, and I don't see why agreeing to be a father to a child born to your wife (knowing that it's not biologically yours) should be different.

You can try and make the argument that he made his decision under duress and/or in a state of mind in which he was unfit to make legally binding concessions, and argue that the court failed to take those factors into account, and you might be right (though we don't really know enough to tell).

Yes.

If he voluntarily goes on to pay child support after the breakup and regularly sees his child, does he get to stop paying (5 years after the breakup and 10 years after he found out the child is not his) when his new girlfriend shows little understanding for him paying for a child that's "not even his"?

Yes.

Well that's just sick.

That's not entirely true. You will be bound by all the residual stipulations of the original contract if you let the two-year-limit slip and continue pretending that you have a contract. For example, if the original contract stipulates (as is commonly the case) that you have to give a 3-month early notice if you want to move out before the contract expires, you'll be bound by that same 3-month notice period. Say, I sign a two-year contract from June 2018 to May 2020 inclusive with an option to get out early with a three-month early notice, and keep paying rent and living in the apartment, if I today tell my landlord I found a new flat and will be out tomorrow, I still have to pay rent for the rest of November and all of December and January/February next year (the current month + 3 full months) - even though I never signed that I wanted to keep the apartment for longer than the May 31, 2020. I'm legally bound by the terms of a contract I never signed - a renewal of our original contract in this case - in all the same ways as if I had signed it.

You didn't sign a contract but you consented to the contract to have a three-month notice period. And, the point is--you can get out. Once you are out, you are not forced to pay for something you don't want and don't use. Are you proposing now that he is obligated to pay child support for three months after he leaves, and that's it?

Now, maybe you have a hard time understanding why an option to bail out early (with a notice period that allows your landlord to find a new tenant to take over when you move out, or to make plans for reconstruction and hire people to do it) makes more sense for home rental than for parenthood, but then maybe you should just think about the difference between the two kind of obligations for like 30 seconds?

....what?

In Australia, if you sign a one year tenancy agreement and move out with no notice on a whim, you are obligated to pay rent until the landlord can find somebody else to rent to (the landlord must make genuine attempts to mitigate her loss).

Imagine instead that you move in, and after three months, you find that nothing in the apartment was as advertised and if you had known that, you never would have signed a lease. So, you move out. You might say they are still obligated to pay until the landlord gets somebody new in, or the next 9 months, whichever is sooner, but it is hardly fair to say you are obligated to pay for 16 years, just because you didn't move out on day one.

Someone who makes a clear decision and sticks to it deserves to have this decision honoured, yes. Whether you call him a psychopath or not.

I find your attitude fundamentally inhumane and frankly such an attitude punishes human frailty and empathy.

Bob and Chris are in the exact same situation. They find out one day that their wife cuckolded them and they are raising somebody's else's genetic offspring.

Bob says 'fuck you, bitch', tells the child never to try to contact him, and leaves after packing a suitcase. It is too much for Bob to either forgive his wife, and he cannot abide the idea that he has spent resources on someone else's offspring. He doesn't have to harden his heart; all the love leaves it instantly.

Chris is deeply hurt by the revelation. He spends a few days wondering what he should do. He consults family. He resolves that his marriage vows are important and he is going to give it six months. He tries to love and forgive his wife. He goes through all the same motions with his daughter but the joy that was once there never returns. After six months, he says to his wife 'it's over, and I'm moving out next month'.

You think Bob's feelings and actions get him off the hook, whereas Chris's attempts at mending and unselfish trial period means he deserves to be on the hook for 16 years.

I find that outcome fundamentally wrong and any law that encourages Bob's actions (which the Finnish law must, as Bob would have gotten out under the 'time limit') and punishes Chris's is a broken law.

If you only answer one thing from this response, I'd like you to answer the above. Do you feel that yes, it's okay, morally right, in fact, for Bob to be off the hook and for Chris to be on the hook?

It is certainly OK for Bob to be off the hook, why wouldn't it? I can sympathise with Chris, and maybe there should be some kind of provision exactly for his kind of situation. For all either of us knows, there is in Finnland.

What I'm not on board with is giving up on the idea that a decision for parenthood, once made (by a sane adult, without duress, etc.) is typically forever because it seems like an easy shortcut to help Chris - certainly not without actual numbers showing that cases like Chris's are common enough to swamp cases where this directly leads to bad outcomes.

I imagine that Finnish law, like the laws in other jurisdictions, contains a provision that decisions made under duress or while under incomplete possession of one's mental capacities are not legally binding. Apparently, they found no evidence that this applied when the guy decided to continue fathering his child after finding out she wasn't his genetic offspring.

That did not answer my question at all. I asked if you thought he consented.

He did not. And since we both seem to agree that it's highly unlikely that Finnish law would consider him as having consented, your little imagined story is perfectly irrelevant.

 

[Metaphor]

and if you were making the case that it should be easier to return a bike after six months than a child, this would be an excellent argument. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you were in the process of making the case that returning a child should be easier.

He isn't returning a child. A child is not a bike. It does not lose value by being parented. When I do something for a child, I am not making a commitment to keep doing it for 18 years.

How old are you, 13? There is no such thing as consent to being a parent for a limited time.

There certainly is. It happens all the time. When I was at university, an older, single mother friend of mine with three children aged 11-15 wanted to go away for a week with a boyfriend. She needed somebody to look after her children in her absence. I agreed to live there and do that for a week. (I was glad when she returned).

If you agree (as an adult, without duress, while in a clear state of mind, fully aware of all relevant facts) to be a father to a child, you are a father to that child until one of you dies and she has received at least the statutory share of your inheritance (or you of hers if she dies before you). It's not one of those decisions you get to re-evaluate every few months based on how you're feeling this morning and whether the mother still does everything you tell her, and for good reasons. If you are unsure why, try to talk about it with any sane adult you can get access to in real life. You don't get to return an adopted child to the foster home if you find out, after six months, that you were naive about how much work being a parent implies, and I don't see why agreeing to be a father to a child born to your wife (knowing that it's not biologically yours) should be different.

Except he didn't agree.

Sane adults can be expected to understand that a decision to become a parent isn't one that comes with an option to re-evaluate in a couple months or couples of years even if they no longer feel what they felt once. Why do you want us to treat this man as a child?

No, I want to treat him as a man in a world where consent matters.

You can try and make the argument that he made his decision under duress and/or in a state of mind in which he was unfit to make legally binding concessions, and argue that the court failed to take those factors into account, and you might be right (though we don't really know enough to tell).

He did not make a decision to father the child. His decision was to not be a father.

Well that's just sick.

Well, if it's degenerated into you asking questions, me answering in good faith consistent with my principles, and you addressing nothing but calling me sick and insane, surely we're done here.

Yes, because this is about rent and not fatherhood. If you want to make it so that the decision to be a father should always be a tentative one that can be revoked whenever one no longer feels like being a parent, you should say so.

You are the one who formulated the ridiculous analogy, not me. I don't think kids are apartments or used bikes.

But, as it is, I have already said, multiple times and given you multiple instances where the decision cannot be revoked. I never, ever said 'all decisions to be a parent are revocable'. Hell, we even disagree over what counts as a decision to be a parent. But don't stuff a straw man and tell me it's my position and I should just admit to it.

I didn't know parenthood comes with a three-month notice period.

I'm sorry to have formulated the analogy about parenthood and renting an apartment. I don't know what I was thinking when I did it.

Can I also suspend it and resume it later? Say I want to go on a five-month sailing cruise in the Caribbean dressed up as a pirate - what do I need to do suspend my parental obligations while I'm away? And are my kids obliged to take me back when I return, or are they free to try find another father in the meantime?

Of course your kids are not obliged to 'take you back'. Hell, they are not even obliged to accept you even if you were the perfect father all the time. Parents have obligations to their children, not the other way around.

That might be because what you agreed to is a one-year rental contract and not a for-life fatherhood.

Nobody thinks fatherhood is for life, including you and Toni. What you mean is: the obligation to pay for children that you are the legal father to (let's set aside what we mean by legal father) lasts from the time you agreed to be a father until the child is 18.

You do not believe (neither does anybody sane) that the law can compel someone to actually be a father. Aside from forcibly separating a legal father from his money (which is fungible, $5 from source A is as good as $5 from source B), you do not believe a man should be compelled by law to love his children, or talk to his children, or visit his children, or remember their birthdays, or give them advice, or anything else an actual father does.

So don't give me the bullshit that consenting to fatherhood is consenting for life, even if we agreed on what consent looks like.

It is certainly OK for Bob to be off the hook, why wouldn't it?

I didn't say it wasn't okay. I think Bob should be off the hook, because he didn't consent to be a parent.

I can sympathise with Chris, and maybe there should be some kind of provision exactly for his kind of situation. For all either of us knows, there is in Finnland.

What I'm not on board with is giving up on the idea that a decision for parenthood, once made (by a sane adult, without duress, etc.) is typically forever because it seems like an easy shortcut to help Chris - certainly not without actual numbers showing that cases like Chris's are common enough to swamp cases where this directly leads to bad outcomes.

Except you don't sympathise with Chris, do you? You think he consented to parenthood. He didn't consent any more than Bob did. He just had more of his own humanity to contend with.

I think neither Bob nor Chris consented to parenthood. If 'Bob' is off the hook (as he should be), so is Chris.

He did not. And since we both seem to agree that it's highly unlikely that Finnish law would consider him as having consented, your little imagined story is perfectly irrelevant.

This from somebody who was pitching love triangle storylines like he's a staff writer for The Bold and the Beautiful.

 

[Jokodo]

He isn't returning a child. A child is not a bike. It does not lose value by being parented. When I do something for a child, I am not making a commitment to keep doing it for 18 years.



There certainly is. It happens all the time. When I was at university, an older, single mother friend of mine with three children aged 11-15 wanted to go away for a week with a boyfriend. She needed somebody to look after her children in her absence. I agreed to live there and do that for a week. (I was glad when she returned).

If you agree (as an adult, without duress, while in a clear state of mind, fully aware of all relevant facts) to be a father to a child, you are a father to that child until one of you dies and she has received at least the statutory share of your inheritance (or you of hers if she dies before you). It's not one of those decisions you get to re-evaluate every few months based on how you're feeling this morning and whether the mother still does everything you tell her, and for good reasons. If you are unsure why, try to talk about it with any sane adult you can get access to in real life. You don't get to return an adopted child to the foster home if you find out, after six months, that you were naive about how much work being a parent implies, and I don't see why agreeing to be a father to a child born to your wife (knowing that it's not biologically yours) should be different.

Except he didn't agree.

Sane adults can be expected to understand that a decision to become a parent isn't one that comes with an option to re-evaluate in a couple months or couples of years even if they no longer feel what they felt once. Why do you want us to treat this man as a child?

No, I want to treat him as a man in a world where consent matters.

You can try and make the argument that he made his decision under duress and/or in a state of mind in which he was unfit to make legally binding concessions, and argue that the court failed to take those factors into account, and you might be right (though we don't really know enough to tell).

He did not make a decision to father the child. His decision was to not be a father.

That's, apparently, what he claimed in retrospect. The court found that he had decided to be a father, and the court may have more pertinent information than we do.

Well that's just sick.

Well, if it's degenerated into you asking questions, me answering in good faith consistent with my principles, and you addressing nothing but calling me sick and insane, surely we're done here.

Yes, because this is about rent and not fatherhood. If you want to make it so that the decision to be a father should always be a tentative one that can be revoked whenever one no longer feels like being a parent, you should say so.

You are the one who formulated the ridiculous analogy, not me. I don't think kids are apartments or used bikes.

But, as it is, I have already said, multiple times and given you multiple instances where the decision cannot be revoked. I never, ever said 'all decisions to be a parent are revocable'. Hell, we even disagree over what counts as a decision to be a parent. But don't stuff a straw man and tell me it's my position and I should just admit to it.

I didn't know parenthood comes with a three-month notice period.

I'm sorry to have formulated the analogy about parenthood and renting an apartment. I don't know what I was thinking when I did it.

Can I also suspend it and resume it later? Say I want to go on a five-month sailing cruise in the Caribbean dressed up as a pirate - what do I need to do suspend my parental obligations while I'm away? And are my kids obliged to take me back when I return, or are they free to try find another father in the meantime?

Of course your kids are not obliged to 'take you back'. Hell, they are not even obliged to accept you even if you were the perfect father all the time. Parents have obligations to their children, not the other way around.

That might be because what you agreed to is a one-year rental contract and not a for-life fatherhood.

Nobody thinks fatherhood is for life, including you and Toni. What you mean is: the obligation to pay for children that you are the legal father to (let's set aside what we mean by legal father) lasts from the time you agreed to be a father until the child is 18.

You do not believe (neither does anybody sane) that the law can compel someone to actually be a father. Aside from forcibly separating a legal father from his money (which is fungible, $5 from source A is as good as $5 from source B), you do not believe a man should be compelled by law to love his children, or talk to his children, or visit his children, or remember their birthdays, or give them advice, or anything else an actual father does.

So don't give me the bullshit that consenting to fatherhood is consenting for life, even if we agreed on what consent looks like.

It is certainly OK for Bob to be off the hook, why wouldn't it?

I didn't say it wasn't okay. I think Bob should be off the hook, because he didn't consent to be a parent.

I can sympathise with Chris, and maybe there should be some kind of provision exactly for his kind of situation. For all either of us knows, there is in Finnland.

What I'm not on board with is giving up on the idea that a decision for parenthood, once made (by a sane adult, without duress, etc.) is typically forever because it seems like an easy shortcut to help Chris - certainly not without actual numbers showing that cases like Chris's are common enough to swamp cases where this directly leads to bad outcomes.

Except you don't sympathise with Chris, do you? You think he consented to parenthood. He didn't consent any more than Bob did. He just had more of his own humanity to contend with.

I think neither Bob nor Chris consented to parenthood. If 'Bob' is off the hook (as he should be), so is Chris.

He did not. And since we both seem to agree that it's highly unlikely that Finnish law would consider him as having consented, your little imagined story is perfectly irrelevant.

This from somebody who was pitching love triangle storylines like he's a staff writer for The Bold and the Beautiful.

You mean the actual, real life families I know that would be broken by your sorry excuse for a proposal? Contrasted with a once-in-a-decade case from 15.000 km away, so extraordinary that it hit international news? Maybe you should get more real.

 

[Metaphor]

You mean the actual, real life families I know that would be broken by your sorry excuse for a proposal? Contrasted with a once-in-a-decade case from 15.000 km away, so extraordinary that it hit international news? Maybe you should get more real.

You believe they would be 'broken'. I believe no such thing.

 

[Jokodo]

You mean the actual, real life families I know that would be broken by your sorry excuse for a proposal? Contrasted with a once-in-a-decade case from 15.000 km away, so extraordinary that it hit international news? Maybe you should get more real.

You believe they would be 'broken'. I believe no such thing.

If the father gets to renege on an obligation he knowingly and willingly entered because some guy in Australia doesn't know the difference between being a father and a babysitter, and the mother and child therefore thrown into poverty, that's not a question of belief.

 

[Metaphor]

You mean the actual, real life families I know that would be broken by your sorry excuse for a proposal? Contrasted with a once-in-a-decade case from 15.000 km away, so extraordinary that it hit international news? Maybe you should get more real.

You believe they would be 'broken'. I believe no such thing.

If the father gets to renege on an obligation he knowingly and willingly entered because some guy in Australia doesn't know the difference between being a father and a babysitter, and the mother and child therefore thrown into poverty, that's not a question of belief.

Someone cannot renege on something they never consented to. I have not suggested parents, including single parents, who need income support should not get it.

You have done nothing but produce strawman after strawman, make false claims about the statistical distribution of experiences (like your claim that you know men who 'suspected' they were not bio fathers, even though by definition you would never know about the men who never suspected), call me sick and insane, and invent scenario after scenario which you then falsely claim I never answer.

Thanks for playing but not only haven't you participated in good faith, you've even walked back claims you originally made, seemingly just in order to disagree with me.

 

[TomC]

You mean the actual, real life families I know that would be broken by your sorry excuse for a proposal? Contrasted with a once-in-a-decade case from 15.000 km away, so extraordinary that it hit international news? Maybe you should get more real.

In what way would this impact those families at all?

According to your stories, all the adults knew from the beginning what was what. The men knew that the child might not be related to them, genetically. They consented anyway.

Kudos to guys like that. My dad adopted me, I'm forever grateful to my real parents for rescuing me from bio-mom and sperm donor. But my dad did consent, he knew what he was choosing. So did the men in your stories. As a result, those are all irrelevant to this case.

Maybe you should get more real.
Tom

 

[Jokodo]

You mean the actual, real life families I know that would be broken by your sorry excuse for a proposal? Contrasted with a once-in-a-decade case from 15.000 km away, so extraordinary that it hit international news? Maybe you should get more real.

In what way would this impact those families at all?

According to your stories, all the adults knew from the beginning what was what. The men knew that the child might not be related to them, genetically. They consented anyway.

Kudos to guys like that. My dad adopted me, I'm forever grateful to my real parents for rescuing me from bio-mom and sperm donor. But my dad did consent, he knew what he was choosing. So did the men in your stories. As a result, those are all irrelevant to this case.

Maybe you should get more real.
Tom

Metaphor has explicitly said that men like this should be able to opt out of fatherhood at any time simply by saying so. His explanation is that there is no paper trail to prove that they ever consented, ignoring the fact that there actions clearly demonstrate they did.

 

[Metaphor]

You mean the actual, real life families I know that would be broken by your sorry excuse for a proposal? Contrasted with a once-in-a-decade case from 15.000 km away, so extraordinary that it hit international news? Maybe you should get more real.

In what way would this impact those families at all?

According to your stories, all the adults knew from the beginning what was what. The men knew that the child might not be related to them, genetically. They consented anyway.

Kudos to guys like that. My dad adopted me, I'm forever grateful to my real parents for rescuing me from bio-mom and sperm donor. But my dad did consent, he knew what he was choosing. So did the men in your stories. As a result, those are all irrelevant to this case.

Maybe you should get more real.
Tom

Metaphor has explicitly said that men like this should be able to opt out of fatherhood at any time simply by saying so. His explanation is that there is no paper trail to prove that they ever consented, ignoring the fact that there actions clearly demonstrate they did.

No, I haven't. I don't remember the details of your anecdote, but I said there is a fact of the matter about whether they consented, and findings of facts are what courts do all the time.

I also reject your absurd notion that my framework would break families like the ones you mentioned. No: if a father wants to stop being a father for whatever reason, my legal framework does not somehow cause that. That family is already broken. I also reject your absurd notion that the opting out of legal fathers who never consented to being fathers should somehow be curtailed, because it would 'plunge' families into poverty, as if women are incapable of paid work, as if there isn't a more suitable legal father, and as if the State does not provide for single parents.

 

[Jokodo]

If the father gets to renege on an obligation he knowingly and willingly entered because some guy in Australia doesn't know the difference between being a father and a babysitter, and the mother and child therefore thrown into poverty, that's not a question of belief.

Someone cannot renege on something they never consented to.

Do you not understand the legal principal that someone can express consent through actions, not only through words? Well, I demonstrated some other scenarios where it applies, in everyday situations, all over the world. Or do you understand it but think that it family law, ever? If so, I expect a justification. Or do you think it should apply to family law, just not to this kind of case? Again, why?

I have not suggested parents, including single parents, who need income support should not get it.

You have done nothing but produce strawman after strawman,

No, I haven't. I presented scenarios where your principles, as you stated them, lead to unexpected und undesired outcomes. You don't get to call them "strawmen" just because you never thought of those scenarios.

make false claims about the statistical distribution of experiences

I didn't make any statistical claims. I said that cases like that also exist (without making claims about their frequency), and that I'd need to see statistical data clearly showing that a scenario like the OP's is more common than those scenarios before considering a solution that helps this guy but throws other families under the bus as a net positive.

(like your claim that you know men who 'suspected' they were not bio fathers, even though by definition you would never know about the men who never suspected),

I would also not know about many men who do suspect or know. It's almost by definition something you don't usually talk about with casual acquaintances.

call me sick and insane,

Sane adults understand that being a babysitter and being a parent are not the same thing, or even comparable. Sane adults understand that actions that signal you want to be a parent can be, in most cases, readily distinguished from actions that signal you want to be a babysitter. Sane adults understand that decisions communicated through your actions only can be legally binding just like decisions communicated in the form of a written contract - we advice people to get written contracts not because otherwise, their rights and obligations are nil (they aren't) but because otherwise, a he-said-she-said situation may arise. Where that is not the case - where the actions of both sides speak a clear language, a contract that was never signed is just as binding.

and invent scenario after scenario which you then falsely claim I never answer.

Because you don't.

Thanks for playing but not only haven't you participated in good faith, you've even walked back claims you originally made, seemingly just in order to disagree with me.

Tell me where I have!

 

[Jokodo]

Metaphor has explicitly said that men like this should be able to opt out of fatherhood at any time simply by saying so. His explanation is that there is no paper trail to prove that they ever consented, ignoring the fact that there actions clearly demonstrate they did.

No, I haven't. I don't remember the details of your anecdote, but I said there is a fact of the matter about whether they consented, and findings of facts are what courts do all the time.

I also reject your absurd notion that my framework would break families like the ones you mentioned. No: if a father wants to stop being a father for whatever reason, my legal framework does not somehow cause that. That family is already broken. I also reject your absurd notion that the opting out of legal fathers who never consented to being fathers

Strawman alert. I never pushed the notion that legal fathers who never consented to being a father should be forced to be fathers nonetheless. I explained to you that consent can be expressed in more than one way, including through consistent actions that only make sense when you have consented even if that consent has never been communicated verbally, much less in a notarized written form. We expect sane adults to know what they're doing, and if they're doing something they don't have to, that they know (or can reasonably be expected to know) that they don't have to, and continue doing it, we rationally conclude that they want to do it.

 

[Metaphor]

Do you not understand the legal principal that someone can express consent through actions, not only through words?

Yes. I reject that the actions taken in the OP amount to consent to fatherhood.

Well, I demonstrated some other scenarios where it applies, in everyday situations, all over the world. Or do you understand it but think that it family law, ever? If so, I expect a justification. Or do you think it should apply to family law, just not to this kind of case? Again, why?

I reject that the actions taken in the OP amount to consent to fatherhood.

No, I haven't. I presented scenarios where your principles, as you stated them, lead to unexpected und undesired outcomes. You don't get to call them "strawmen" just because you never thought of those scenarios.

No. You claim they are unexpected and undesired. I did not say the outcomes were unexpected and undesired.

I didn't make any statistical claims. I said that cases like that also exist (without making claims about their frequency), and that I'd need to see statistical data clearly showing that a scenario like the OP's is more common than those scenarios before considering a solution that helps this guy but throws other families under the bus as a net positive.

I reject that my framework throws families 'under the bus'.

Sane adults understand that being a babysitter and being a parent are not the same thing, or even comparable. Sane adults understand that actions that signal you want to be a parent can be, in most cases, readily distinguished from actions that signal you want to be a babysitter. Sane adults understand that decisions communicated through your actions only can be legally binding just like decisions communicated in the form of a written contract - we advice people to get written contracts not because otherwise, their rights and obligations are nil (they aren't) but because otherwise, a he-said-she-said situation may arise. Where that is not the case - where the actions of both sides speak a clear language, a contract that was never signed is just as binding.

I understand that contracts that are not in writing can nonetheless be binding contracts, and never denied it, and advised in several posts for people to get things in writing as you suggest.

I reject that acting as a father to a child you did not consent to amounts to consenting to be that child's father until the child is 18.

 

[Metaphor]

Metaphor has explicitly said that men like this should be able to opt out of fatherhood at any time simply by saying so. His explanation is that there is no paper trail to prove that they ever consented, ignoring the fact that there actions clearly demonstrate they did.

No, I haven't. I don't remember the details of your anecdote, but I said there is a fact of the matter about whether they consented, and findings of facts are what courts do all the time.

I also reject your absurd notion that my framework would break families like the ones you mentioned. No: if a father wants to stop being a father for whatever reason, my legal framework does not somehow cause that. That family is already broken. I also reject your absurd notion that the opting out of legal fathers who never consented to being fathers

Strawman alert. I never pushed the notion that legal fathers who never consented to being a father should be forced to be fathers nonetheless. I explained to you that consent can be expressed in more than one way, including through consistent actions that only make sense when you have consented even if that consent has never been communicated verbally, much less in a notarized written form. We expect sane adults to know what they're doing, and if they're doing something they don't have to, that they know (or can reasonably be expected to know) that they don't have to, and continue doing it, we rationally conclude that they want to do it.

They want to do it for the time they are doing it.

In your preferred legal framework, a man can never act temporarily as a father to children he did not consent to. If a single woman with two young teenage children got a new boyfriend, and he cohabited with her for two years, he can never consent to acting as a father for the duration of his relationship with the mother. It's either never do a single thing to signal fatherhood, or, act as a father for any length of time and that is consent to permanent fatherhood obligation.

Well, fine. I understand that that's your position. I reject that it's a fair and rational one.

 

[Jokodo]

Strawman alert. I never pushed the notion that legal fathers who never consented to being a father should be forced to be fathers nonetheless. I explained to you that consent can be expressed in more than one way, including through consistent actions that only make sense when you have consented even if that consent has never been communicated verbally, much less in a notarized written form. We expect sane adults to know what they're doing, and if they're doing something they don't have to, that they know (or can reasonably be expected to know) that they don't have to, and continue doing it, we rationally conclude that they want to do it.

They want to do it for the time they are doing it.

Well there's the thing. You don't get to be a parent until further notice. It's not one of those decisions you get to revoke when you no longer feel like it. And for good reasons too.

In your preferred legal framework, a man can never act temporarily as a father to children he did not consent to. If a single woman with two young teenage children got a new boyfriend, and he cohabited with her for two years, he can never consent to acting as a father for the duration of his relationship with the mother. It's either never do a single thing to signal fatherhood, or, act as a father for any length of time and that is consent to permanent fatherhood obligation.

Well, fine. I understand that that's your position. I reject that it's a fair and rational one.

Your're being dishonest. That is not my position, and nothing I said indicates that it is. You don't enter a tenancy contract by sleeping over a few times, and you don't become a father by substituting for your partner in school meetings for a few times.

If, however, you pretend to the school board that you are the father and that you are attending the meeting as the father rather than substituting for the mother who is on a business trip, things might be different. That might be construed as evidence that you want to be a father, though in itself it would probably be insufficient. If you then also sign paperwork as the father, or scold the children in public by calling you by your first name instead of "daddy", I guess you've made a choice.

 

[Jokodo]

Yes. I reject that the actions taken in the OP amount to consent to fatherhood.



I reject that the actions taken in the OP amount to consent to fatherhood.

And I tend to agree, to the extent that what we've seen represents a full picture, though the court may have seen additional evidence we don't know of that changes that picture.

But you also explicitly said that there should be no time limit at all, that a father who has been a father to a child he knows is not biologically his for 10 years should be able to cancel his obligation on a whim absent a documented adoption or some other kind of evidence of explicit consent.

 

[Metaphor]

Well there's the thing. You don't get to be a parent until further notice. It's not one of those decisions you get to revoke when you no longer feel like it. And for good reasons too.

You are begging the question. Why? Why have you decided that consent to fatherhood is always permanent consent?

Note that you don't really believe in permanent consent; you believe only in forcibly extracting money from people who no longer want to be parents. Someone can stop acting as a parent in every way it matters but still be forced to be a parent in the way it least matters, by providing money, which is fungible.

Your're being dishonest. That is not my position, and nothing I said indicates that it is. You don't enter a tenancy contract by sleeping over a few times, and you don't become a father by substituting for your partner in school meetings for a few times.

If, however, you pretend to the school board that you are the father and that you are attending the meeting as the father rather than substituting for the mother who is on a business trip, things might be different. That might be construed as evidence that you want to be a father, though in itself it would probably be insufficient. If you then also sign paperwork as the father, I guess you've made a choice.

And I am saying, even if the boyfriend did that for two years, he can opt out of fatherhood at any time. Acting as a father for a short-term period is not consent to acting as a father forever.

 

[Metaphor]

Yes. I reject that the actions taken in the OP amount to consent to fatherhood.



I reject that the actions taken in the OP amount to consent to fatherhood.

And I tend to agree, to the extent that what we've seen represents a full picture, though the court may have seen additional evidence we don't know of that changes that picture.

But you also explicitly said that there should be no time limit at all, that a father who has been a father to a child he knows is not biologically his for 10 years should be able to cancel his obligation on a whim absent a documented adoption or some other kind of evidence of explicit consent.

Your language begs the question. He is not cancelling an obligation. He was never obligated in the first place.

You and others seem continually unable to acknowledge or grasp that no legal framework can force a man to continue to be a father in the ways that matter. In that sense, you believe that he can, in fact, 'cancel his obligation' and you agree that he should be able to. No legal framework is going to compel a man to visit his children. No legal framework is going to compel a man to help children with their homework. No legal framework is going to put love into the heart of a person who does not feel it.

So, we can acknowledge that in fact, legal frameworks cannot compel fatherhood, even for fathers who explicitly consented to it. It can only compel the forcible transfer of cash from one person to another.

You have a very conservative paradigm in your head and you can't even explore the possibility of other options.

 

[Jokodo]

Well there's the thing. You don't get to be a parent until further notice. It's not one of those decisions you get to revoke when you no longer feel like it. And for good reasons too.

You are begging the question. Why? Why have you decided that consent to fatherhood is always permanent consent?

Note that you don't really believe in permanent consent; you believe only in forcibly extracting money from people who no longer want to be parents.

That's not true. You also don't get to kick out your child from your home when you find that, during a lockdown, you have better use for their room as a space for working from home. Money is not the only kind of obligation you have towards your children.

If your 16 year-old refuses to go to the high-school you picked for them because its focus areas don't fit their interests at all, which you know but refuse to take into account control freak that you are, do you get to say "I know longer want to be your parent, if you switch schools you go find your own place to live?

What if you don't like their boyfriend?

That's the kind of situations you buy yourself when you say consent to parenthood should be tentative.

Your're being dishonest. That is not my position, and nothing I said indicates that it is. You don't enter a tenancy contract by sleeping over a few times, and you don't become a father by substituting for your partner in school meetings for a few times.

If, however, you pretend to the school board that you are the father and that you are attending the meeting as the father rather than substituting for the mother who is on a business trip, things might be different. That might be construed as evidence that you want to be a father, though in itself it would probably be insufficient. If you then also sign paperwork as the father, I guess you've made a choice.

And I am saying, even if the boyfriend did that for two years, he can opt out of fatherhood at any time. Acting as a father for a short-term period is not consent to acting as a father forever.

Acting as the father to a child that already is your legal child for years indicates a choice, the choice that you want to continue being that child's legal father.