Men and Women

We have been having a lively conversation about child support and paternity. A comment here made me want to write a complete post as a story and possible warning from my own past:

The one thing that I have always been poor at, is in romantic relationships with women. I did have a girlfriend once who told me that it was because I am a professional rescuer in every sense of the word, and she told me that because I feel the need to rescue everyone, some women will take advantage of that. I’m not sure if she is right, but a string of failed relationships does tell a compelling story.

One of those relationships was as big of a mess as you could ever imagine. This one was the one and only time that I dated a woman who had children. She had two of them, and about 3 months after we began dating, I let her move in with me because she and her two kids had nowhere else to go. I helped her out in a lot of ways. I let her use my second car, I provided her with a cell phone on my account, and treated her children properly. A few months later, we broke up, but she kept my car and my cell phone. Then she sued me for child support.

So it turns out that we had dated for a year and a couple of days before breaking up, and there is a law that says if a man acts like a father to children that aren’t his for a year or more, but that man is the only father figure these children know, the court can consider what is in the best interests of the children and can compel him to visit, spend time with, and pay child support for the children. The theory is called parentage by estoppel. Under the doctrine of parentage by estoppel, a court can order a non-biological man to pay child support if:

• He knew he was not the biological father.
• He held himself out or acted as if her were the child’s father
• The child relied on that representation, forming a parental bond and treating him as a father.

This is applied in narrow circumstances, often in stepparent or long-term partner situations. A year or more of acting as the only father figure can support such a finding. Once established as a legal or equitable parent, support obligations can follow even after separation. So that’s what she tried to do.

In my case, she told the court I was abusing her, so she wanted child support and also a domestic violence injunction. That way, I wouldn’t get other parental rights like visitation or joint custody, but I would still have to pay child support. It took me a year to get out of that mess. You can read about much of the case here. I resolved to never again date a woman who had a child.

I made the mistake of telling the story to another girlfriend, and she tried doing the same thing, just minus the child support. It was also a mess. The only good thing with this one is that she was stupid and I only had to deal with it for about a month. I can certainly understand the idea of men not wanting anything to do with women. Thanks to our court system, relationships with women are something that is fraught with danger.