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]

He became a father of choice.

That does not seem to fit the facts as we know them without quite a bit of contortion, semantics and speculation.

I think it's a downright odd interpretation of what a choice is. I do not even understand how you could possibly even know it.

I think you continue to conflate your own situation with a very different one.

But, since you agree that you are being harsh, perhaps that is all there is to say. I do not agree with you that it is a good thing.

Of course it fits the facts as far as we know. He did not challenge paternity. He acted as father to the child.

He did not challenge paternity because he thought it was his biological child.

Do you remember how consent works, Toni?

 

[Toni]

So, he doesn't want to be a father to a child that is not his genetically. He did not consent to that.

Remember consent?

There is some box that men check that indicates that they consent to being the father to the child?

 

[Metaphor]

Nothing can make him not a monster except himself. Parents blaming the child for the other parent's behavior is monstrous--and all too common.

There is no evidence he is 'blaming' the child.

But, even if he were, so what? Do you think you can make him love a child he doesn't love, and parent a child he does not want to parent?

He can grow the fuck up and think of the child which is what the court is doing: thinking of the child. Also of the people's interest in ensuring that children are provided for, hopefully by the legal parent.

Why does the biological father not enter into consideration for you? Why do you want to encourage men fathering children that they will then have no obligation towards?

The court can order whatever is usual and customary support for the child.

If someone only loves a child because they believe there is a genetic connection to the child then that's not really love.

Let's say that is the case. Or, let's say that it is hard for him to look at the child that reminds him of that traumatic betrayal, and that he is overwhelmed with negative emotion when he sees that child. So, that makes him a monster. Okay. So, why should a monster pay money towards a child that is not his and he hates?

Why shouldn't the biological father provide for this child? Why has he escaped your ire?

Why do you want to punish the cuckolded husband for having the wrong feelings?

 

[Toni]

There is no evidence he is 'blaming' the child.

But, even if he were, so what? Do you think you can make him love a child he doesn't love, and parent a child he does not want to parent?



Why does the biological father not enter into consideration for you? Why do you want to encourage men fathering children that they will then have no obligation towards?

The court can order whatever is usual and customary support for the child.

If someone only loves a child because they believe there is a genetic connection to the child then that's not really love.

Let's say that is the case. Or, let's say that it is hard for him to look at the child that reminds him of that traumatic betrayal, and that he is overwhelmed with negative emotion when he sees that child. So, that makes him a monster. Okay. So, why should a monster pay money towards a child that is not his and he hates?

Why shouldn't the biological father provide for this child? Why has he escaped your ire?

Why do you want to punish the cuckolded husband for having the wrong feelings?

Apparently, Finnish law can compel the husband to financially support the child although in the article it's called alimony. The husband did not challenge paternity until after the very generous 2 year time limit.

No one can compel love. That does not make the man any less of a monster for having loved the child and then withdrawn the love because of anger towards the mother who is not the child. So, sure, he's free to be a monster if that's what he is willing to live with but in accordance with Finish law, he must support the child he treated as his for more than 2 years.

 

[Metaphor]

So, he doesn't want to be a father to a child that is not his genetically. He did not consent to that.

Remember consent?

There is some box that men check that indicates that they consent to being the father to the child?

No. That isn't how consent works, Toni. I knew you didn't know.

What he consented to was the possibility of having his own genetic child with his wife as the mother. That's the spoken and unspoken understanding of a monogamous heterosexual marriage where there is unprotected sex.

You do not care that his consent was not obtained, and you want to force him to be a parent. Well, you can't force him. You know only that you can forcibly extract money from him, but you cannot make him feel love for the child and you cannot order him to spend time with the child. But you can sever any hope whatsoever that he might come around on his feelings for the child by punishing the cuckolded husband for having the wrong feelings.

Your own hypocrisy and dishonesty is so startling it should be like an airhorn to you.

 

[Metaphor]

Apparently, Finnish law can compel the husband to financially support the child although in the article it's called alimony.

Yes, I know. That's what the OP is about. About how unfair that law is.

The husband did not challenge paternity until after the very generous 2 year time limit.

So generous! Tell me Toni, what is the correct amount of time for a man to challenge the paternity of a child he thinks is his? For you I'm guessing 'zero days'.

No one can compel love. That does not make the man any less of a monster for having loved the child and then withdrawn the love because of anger towards the mother who is not the child. So, sure, he's free to be a monster if that's what he is willing to live with but in accordance with Finish law, he must support the child he treated as his for more than 2 years.

Yes, I know what the case entails. I am not asking what the situation is. It is not ambiguous.

I'm asking you why you support it. I'm asking you why you think it's fair and reasonable to use the State to extract money from a man because his wife cuckolded him.

 

[Metaphor]

Not a peep from Toni or anyone else on why the biological father escapes all responsibility.

 

[laughing dog]

When all else fails, march in your pedantry.

It wasn't my pedantry, it was Toni's.

No one forced you to bring up an irrelevant detail to try to dismiss your faulty reasoning.

What he could have done to avoid being a victim of the State is all well and fine, but it doesn't make the law any better that there are actions he could have taken to protect himself from a cuckolding women--actions he only needs to take because of an unjust law.

Your opinion of the "justness" of the law is not shared by the Finnish people.

Toni made - and makes - all and any kinds of excuses she can imagine for the woman who betrayed her husband, even invoking the spectre of rape!

Toni's double standards beggar belief. If this woman had instead wanted to abort the baby, Toni would have undoubtedly supported that. After all, taking actions (like having sex) that could end up in pregnancy does not mean you are consenting to be a parent. Except for men. And even if you didn't actually cause a pregnancy.

Sorry, I am not a therapist who can help you with your delusions.

And, won't somebody think of the children?

That is the crux.

That child deserves a father, don't you know?

Every child deserves a loving father.

Even a monster.

No.

And, even though parenting is about loving your child and spending time with them, the court can't actually order that. But that doesn't matter. The court can seize assets.

A court cannot order love. A court can order child support. Of course, it is possible that the payment of child support might induce a parent (of either gender) to think about the child and its needs. It is possible that in doing so, the parent might come to realize that their prior affection (if there had been some) was actual love and that they will not let their anger and hurt with the other parent interfere with their relationship with the child.

(Not a word from Toni on why the actual, genetic father isn't on the hook.

he actual father is not on the hook because this man is the legal father. Duh. I realize you feel the real sperm donor should be on the hook, but, in this case, Finnish law and this man's tardiness let him off the financial hook.

As long as some man somewhere is).

Again, I am not a therapist who can help you with your delusions.

 

[laughing dog]

No, it points out the logic of the proposition - if he had a vasectomy, he could have easily avoided this situation. If I had proposed it as the solution, you'd have a point. But since I explicitly ended my observation with explicitly pointing out that it is basic logic and that it has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with the vasectomy proposition, it ought to be clear that I did not agree or disagree with the proposition.

Nice try.

I simply pointed out that in this case, if this man had had a vasectomy, then the unfortunate outcome would have been avoided. I pointed out the reasonableness/validity of her "if then" observation, I did not justify it.

Toni (who for whatever reasons has very one-sided views imo) says it in such situations, therefore you effectively more or less back it up automatically. It's what you do. It's been one of the more obvious and predictable features of this forum ever since I joined.

In this thread, you cannot point to any post of mine that promotes the proposition that men should get vasectomies if they don't want to have children. Nor can you point to any post of mine that says this Finnish law is good. Nor can you point to any defense of any other point Toni made.

Usually you recognize reason and are amenable to it. But, you (and Metaphor) abandon it when it comes to Toni. Really, it is boringly predictable with both of you.

 

[Metaphor]

Your opinion of the "justness" of the law is not shared by the Finnish people.

It's shared by enough of them for comments and hashtags on social media to appear.

Sorry, I am not a therapist who can help you with your delusions.

Sorry, I did not mean to imply that I value your counsel.

A court cannot order love. A court can order child support. Of course, it is possible that the payment of child support might induce a parent (of either gender) to think about the child and its needs. It is possible that in doing so, the parent might come to realize that their prior affection (if there had been some) was actual love and that they will not let their anger and hurt with the other parent interfere with their relationship with the child.

I suppose all kinds of things are possible, until they are proved impossible.

But, of course, your imagined scenario makes things worse, not better. It is justifying state coercion to get a man who has the wrong feelings have the right feelings instead.

Winston loved Big Brother at the end, too.

he actual father is not on the hook because this man is the legal father. Duh. I realize you feel the real sperm donor should be on the hook, but, in this case, Finnish law and this man's tardiness let him off the financial hook.

I understand the situation. I have the facts. If all I was interested in was 'was the ruling sound according to Finnish law', I'd have asked that in the OP.

Again, I am not a therapist who can help you with your delusions.

Again, I did not mean to imply that I value your counsel.

 

[Jokodo]

To suggest that you are overstating the 'death of Europe' thing, that's in your OP title, obviously, and therefore spot on topic. You seriously couldn't get that I was saying that, especially from my last (bolded) sentence?

No. I couldn't get what your comments about paid parental leave have to do with anything.

It's curious to me how triggering my subtitle is to people.

Triggering? I'd say its being derided as it's worthy of derision.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As Sowell would say, there are no solutions only trade offs. The presumption of paternity - which usually can be rebutted in the first year or two depending on locale - ensures that children of cuckoldry are not made burdens of society. May seem unfair, but that’s the patriarchy.

There should be no time limit. There is no justification for imposing a burden on someone who isn't responsible.

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

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

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

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The innocent is the child, in this case. Outside of some Islamic states, conceiving a child through an adulterous affair is not actually a crime.

The "father" being stuck with the bill is also an innocent.

The man believed he was the father of his wife's child. He seems to have not questioned this at all. He acted as a father to the child, as any decent human being would do. I do understand why he is hurt and angry at finding out that his wife cheated and that he is not the genetic father of the child but how exactly is this the child's fault? Why should the child go without needed support, financial and otherwise? Did the man suddenly decide he didn't love the child? Was he merely pretending to love the child before? Either of these makes the man a monster. Which kind of monster do you suppose that he is?

It's not the child's fault. The support should come from the people responsible for creating the obligation.

Note that in a situation like this I think the "father" should retain visitation even though I think child support should not be obligated.

No one is suggesting otherwise.

You are--you're saying the woman should be blameless for naming the wrong father.

Honest mistakes can be made. Women can make a choice about who they think would be a better bet as father for their child. Think about it: You are in a stable relationship but have an indiscretion during some time apart. You hook up with a past love. It was a one off thing and you immediately regret it. Or it wasn't even consensual but you're not inclined to report it to the police. You end up pregnant because the 14 times you had sex with your partner did not impregnate you but the one time you had sex with someone else did---most women would assume it was the guy they were having regular sex with.

She knows she's lying. If she swears under oath the good provider is the father then she should go to jail.

Excuse me? Under what reality does a married woman swear under oath that the father of her child is her husband? This is stricter, I believe than Sharia law.

Testimony in court is under oath. She says he's the father when she knows otherwise, she just committed perjury.

Or are you suggesting that every woman knows exactly who the father of her child is? Because I've explained that in fact, that's not always the case. Not at all. And sometimes she makes a mistake because the doctor made a mistake about the date of conception or whether or not a vasectomy was effective or a dozen other reasons. And sometimes she's in a difficult situation and makes her very best guess. And sometimes wishful thinking is involved. Sometimes she tells her boyfriend that he's the father because she doesn't want to hurt him by telling him that maybe he's not because one time--and only one time--she cheated or was pressured into sex with someone else. So, in the course of a week, say she had sex with her boyfriend 12 times and once, with some other guy. She gets pregnant that week. Most women would assume that the boyfriend was the father of the child. Or she has sex with her boyfriend 12 times in one week. They have a fight. She has sex the next week with some other guy, one time. A month later she realizes she might be pregnant. The doctor tells her she conceived during the week she had sex 12 times with her boyfriend.

Anything to excuse grand theft on the woman's part.

I realize that this is even worse than suggesting that men start assuming responsibility for birth control but honestly, it's in your best interests to start being more selective about where you put your penis. If there's no way in hell you'd want her as the mother of your offspring, maybe that's a hard pass.

Once again, anything to excuse the woman.

No, I just think that men should start acting like adults and assume some responsibility for birth control. If that's your version of excusing the woman, then you are way more messed up than I had imagined.

You're saying that paternity fraud is his fault for not assuming responsibility for birth control. That's major level blame deflection.

 

[Toni]

So, he doesn't want to be a father to a child that is not his genetically. He did not consent to that.

Remember consent?

There is some box that men check that indicates that they consent to being the father to the child?

No. That isn't how consent works, Toni. I knew you didn't know.

What he consented to was the possibility of having his own genetic child with his wife as the mother. That's the spoken and unspoken understanding of a monogamous heterosexual marriage where there is unprotected sex.

You do not care that his consent was not obtained, and you want to force him to be a parent. Well, you can't force him. You know only that you can forcibly extract money from him, but you cannot make him feel love for the child and you cannot order him to spend time with the child. But you can sever any hope whatsoever that he might come around on his feelings for the child by punishing the cuckolded husband for having the wrong feelings.

Your own hypocrisy and dishonesty is so startling it should be like an airhorn to you.

You don't know that the marriage was (supposedly) monogamous. You don't know that anyone had unprotected sex. Birth control fails.

He DID 'consent' to being father to this child. The one that was growing in her belly. Does the man get to withdraw his consent if the child is the wrong gender? Has a physical or genetic abnormality? Is gay or transgender or ambiguously sexed? Hearing impaired? Blind? Has the wrong color hair?

We do not know when the mother knew that her husband was not the father or how that information came to be revealed to either of them. For all we know, she believed her husband was the father of the child and only later considered it could have been the other guy. We do not know.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As Sowell would say, there are no solutions only trade offs. The presumption of paternity - which usually can be rebutted in the first year or two depending on locale - ensures that children of cuckoldry are not made burdens of society. May seem unfair, but that’s the patriarchy.

There should be no time limit. There is no justification for imposing a burden on someone who isn't responsible.

I think that just for pragmatic reasons, and as with many other situations, time limits are not unreasonable legal devices.

In the general case statute of limitations makes sense. However, these days paternity or the lack thereof is a scientific matter, no evidence will degrade, no witnesses will forget, the reasons we have a statute of limitations don't apply.

I suspect that the time limits here are short in order to try to minimise disruption for the child. In other words to encourage the adults to make a decision.

I think they're simply a relic. They make sense in a pre-DNA legal system.

So I think one problem here might be that the (well-meaning) laws are using very blunt instruments. In this case, the husband is essentially collateral damage in a system where the child, not unreasonably, is intended to be the top priority. But even those who might try to say that in the round, such laws are better for a society than they are worse should imo have more sympathy for this guy.

I do agree he's collateral damage--but I don't think we need to accept this collateral damage any more.

And if it's true as Jayjay said that this woman was also later convicted of embezzlement, then that might be considered a bit of a potential red flag, as regard our interim speculations. Nor does the infidelity reflect well on her. To completely disregard such things and trot out the (in this case) largely irrelevant 'men should have vasectomies' is imo more than a bit off.

The vasectomy bit is pure victim-blaming.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If he had a vasectomy, he would have known the child was not his even before the birth. So he would have had plenty of time to file for annulment. Sorry, that is really basic logic and it has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with the request of "Please get a vasectomy if you don't want children".

That's an incredibly victim-blaming 'logic', especially when we don't even know if he previously did or didn't want any more children with his wife.

It's not at all victim blaming. He is not a victim of this child's birth! As far as we can tell, he welcomed the child and loved the child! Now he's pissed at the mom, justifiably, and likely devastated as well. Very understandable right up to the point where he rejects the child who regards him as daddy. That's emotionally cruel, far more cruel than the mother having sex with someone else.

But he is a victim of her grand theft.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, it points out the logic of the proposition - if he had a vasectomy, he could have easily avoided this situation. If I had proposed it as the solution, you'd have a point. But since I explicitly ended my observation with explicitly pointing out that it is basic logic and that it has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with the vasectomy proposition, it ought to be clear that I did not agree or disagree with the proposition.

The thing is, and it's pretty important: he did want a child.

We have no indication of this. He accepted that he had a child, that doesn't mean that he wanted to create one.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, he absolutely became a father of his own choice. He wanted to have a child. He CHOSE to try and have a child. Either they were actively trying to have a child, or when he heard his wife was pregnant, he chose to stick around. Obviously he thought it could have been his, so that means that they were having sex, within a marriage, that could ostensibly produce a child. That's a choice. And the result is a child. He chose to have a child. Sucks to be him that he didn't get exactly the child he was looking to have.

Child is born a grotesquery of genetics? Congratulations, enjoy the next three years as the child you had withers and dies of some fatal abnormality. It's yours and you get to foot the bill. Have a perfectly normal child born to your home that will live and love and learn? Go ahead and abandon them!

Choosing to stick around when she had an oops doesn't make him want a child. The deed was done, he couldn't change that, there is no choice.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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

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

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

 

[ruby sparks]

He became a father of choice.

That does not seem to fit the facts as we know them without quite a bit of contortion, semantics and speculation.

I think it's a downright odd interpretation of what a choice is. I do not even understand how you could possibly even know it.

I think you continue to conflate your own situation with a very different one.

But, since you agree that you are being harsh, perhaps that is all there is to say. I do not agree with you that it is a good thing.

Of course it fits the facts as far as we know. He did not challenge paternity. He acted as father to the child.

Wtf?