What irony!
Just a few days ago, I posted about extra pair copulations, talking about beta male birds who sneak up and “mate” with married birds while the alpha male husband is off fighting. I took the bird comparison and humanized it, comparing the beta bird to a guy who cheats with the wife of a military man who is fighting. I postulated that alpha males always beat beta males.
Well…it looks like I’m kind of wrong. Betas (for lack of a better word) can win…in court. The NY Times site has an article that discusses a very interesting situation with paternity. Check it here.
Mike suspected his wife Stephanie of cheating. He finds love letters from Rob, one of her coworkers, and he brings it up with her. They have a three year old daughter named L, and Stephanie confesses to a “fleeting” affair, but says that the daughter is Mike’s. Mike then finds a picture of Rob tucked into their mattress, and he asks for a paternity test. They get the results, and it’s not his! L is the result of an extra pair copulation. Mike and Stephanie divorce, and Mike agrees to pay child support of $7,500 a year. So far everything is cool, even if they’re no longer married.
But then Stephanie and Rob decide to move in together, and it turns out that Rob is the biological father of L. Mike naturally feels screwed by this beta male who blindsided him. He points out that they are an intact family, genes and all. So he says he doesn’t want to pay child support anymore since his “daughter” has her biological father living with him–basically, that cheatin’ beta oughtta pay for his own offspring.
However, this doesn’t fly in the courts. The court rules that since Mike raised her and continues to see her, Mike is L’s father, Rob is not. So even though Stephie and Rob cheated on Mike, Mike gets stuck with a bill every month. Stephie and Rob are living in marital bliss, and Mike is financing it.
Check out the article. Even though I was amazed that the courts would support Stephie and Rob, the logic does make a certain kind of sense–we do have to do what’s best for the child by not separating her from the man she has known as her father, and in the converse situation, a father who raises a child should get parental rights, even if he’s not the biological father. However, this raises a question on the other side–should a woman be able to sue a guy who got her pregnant if he’s never acted like a father?
In other words, what determines paternity?
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I agree with everything you said. About #1…I think...
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Agreeing to support that child was just dumb. He might as well have gotten on all fours and begged the judges to screw him.
The courts don’t seem to care so much about the MARK’s presence in the child’s life, as they do about his money.
I wouldn’t say he’s dumb. He’s human. And good.
My daughter’s biological dad, my ex THING, pays less than Mike does. Even then, ONLY to have property claim on her. He is not part of her life right now – but will demand to see her once a year to “renew his membership” so to speak.
RE: paternity – biological ties does not make a someone more of a dad than another man who has the actual emotional ties to the child.
I read the article and these cases say volumes about cheating partner and the men who fathered the children biologically but won’t do the right thing.
I’m finding out that many mothers also will not do the right thing by their children. IF Nahmja and I were to go separate ways, I would encourage and cultivate a relationship between LN and Nahmja. Right now, he’s the only “real” dad she’s ever known as he’s done more for her in the last year than her bio dad has and ever will. However, I wouldn’t hold that bond ransom for some kind of monetary support! The first case (Mike/Stephanie/Rob) is heartbreaking – the man obviously cares deeply for the little girl and it seems he’s the one one who does. The mom must really have a pair of balls, to demand child support from a man on whom she cheated… but that Rob? He’s quite the weasel.
They should separate “financial support” from this equation. Courts can issue visitation rights but eliminate financial burden. THAT would protect the child and her happiness without letting a deadbeat bio dad have cake and eat it as well.
In reverse, visitation rights do not equate financial support, i.e. even if the bio-dad was NOT given any visitation (in my case, if I had pursued full custody without visitation, he would have had to still pay). So I don’t see why the two are tied in this case. Visitation =YES. Child support = NO.
Let’s see… as a male, this means if I impregnate a woman, I better find one who will keep it a secret from her husband for some number of years, whatever the statute is. The problem really is the suspicious husband, so the best idea is to form a weakish bond with the woman so that she doesn’t leave her man YET, but strong enough so that when her man finally goes and has the test done, she comes to live with me and I can have at least partial custody of the child. I could do this with 50 other women, and one may work out in the end. Either way, I pollute the gene pool with my @$$hole genes and don’t pay a dime. Absolutely brilliant.
That’s fucked up. I feel really bad for Mike.
Thanks, MN! I agree that Nahmja is more of a father than Thing. And you all are more of a family now!
EJ:
I’m in shock too. It looks like Steph gets the best of both worlds, although I think we all agree that she’s currently married to a weasel.
Maybe they could get rid of the notion that a person can only have one daddy–financially, anyway. Stephanie had two men in her life, and she currently still has two–one who lives with her, and one who supports her little girl. I think they should make the weasel Rob pay for some of it. He got the benefits, got the woman, so the least he could do is to pay for some of it!
The courts are binary. If it wasn’t, people would be running to the courts to fix every single problem. The message here is:
1.) Mike is not an Alpha. Mike is the beta.
2.) Rob is the Alpha. He and Stephanie, probably unintentionally out smarted Mike.
3.) People seriously need to vet someone before marrying. That is what the court is indirectly saying.
People bring me bad contracts every day. Most recently a long complex convaluded series of licensing agreements. Bottomline is the artist was caught up in the fact that someone wanted to licence his song and signed on the dotted line. The contract has been tried and tested over 60 year. The promoters are no dummies, they may be assholes, but they are no dummies. Long story short, artist was caught up in the romance of having his songs promoted he did not know what he was getting into and signed anything and everything presented to him.
Likewise, Mike was caught up in the fact that Stephanie picked him, without vetting who she is. He is stuck. Trust and respect should be earned.
@American Girl: It’s a little more complicated than vetting your potential significant other.
The court screwed him. While he may have raised the daughter as his own, it is NOT HIS DAUGHTER. Had he known that it was not his daughter from the beginning, this would have been an entirely different situation.
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If you want to look at “child custody” as a contract, then there are possibly a dozen areas where the facts that
1. she cheated on him,
2. that she had sexual intercourse with the other man, resulting in his daughter,
3. that she didn’t inform her then-husband that it may not be his child,
4. that she is not his biological daughter,
would immediately null the contract, a.k.a. a breach of contract. Not only that, but once he is discharged of all obligations that he has to “child custody,” he could seek damages. What damages you ask? How about the LAST THREE YEARS THAT HE RAISED SOMEONE ELSE’S DAUGHTER UNDER THE EX-WIFE’S FALSE PRETENSE.
If I were Mike, I would appeal and put it all on the line. If you make me pay child support, then I’m the “de facto” father. And in that case, I demand FULL CUSTODY because the cheating bitch ex-wife never told me that it might be another man’s daughter. She has no credibility whatsoever due to the fact that she cheated on Mike, that her continued affair resulted in their divorce and that she had Mike paying child support under fraudulent circumstances.
Holy shit. Few things get me as riled up as this.
Out of curiosity, wasn’t cheating once illegal? Could they bring back that law…halfway? Meaning that if someone took a financial hit as a result of your cheating, he or she could sue you for it?
Yes, cheating on your spouse is the crime of adultery. The penalties for adultery are different state by state, if they still consider it a crime in their penal code.
If Mike and Stephanie were married when the child was born, even if Mike knew the daughter was not his, the state would still hold him accountable as the father of Stephanie’s child.
When the state becomes involved, who is the harm against and who created it? If you want the state to integral your personal life and in the decisions you make, perhaps the state should determine whether or not one should marry? If you put the onus upon the state to fix other domestice problems, the state will have more of a stake and more of a say of how to run your personal life.
The onus remains on the parties involved. The message sent to Mike and others like him, know your prospective spouse and understand when you marry you in it for the long haul.
Likewise in contract’s the states are more inclined to uphold contracts that destroy them.
As for sex, sex in contracts is one of those things that courts will not enforce. Any contract for sex is illegal. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts if you filed a case for breach of contract against a prostitute for not performing or not performing per the agreement, your case will be dismissed and you wil probably get a knock on your door from the local law enforcement with Exhibit 1 being your complaint for breach of contract. Likewise, if you pay some to perform some sex act online and he or she doesn’t do what you want them to, you probably won’t get your money back.
With regard to marriage, what if one spouse doesn’t want to have sex with another? Will a court make one spouse have sex 1 or 7 times a week with the other spouse? You’ll find more states are getting out of the business of prosecuting adultery as a crime much like how the crime of seduction is no longer prosecuted. You need to mind your own Ps and Qs.
Nobody made Mike marry Stephanie.
@American Girl: You obviously side with the unfaithful bitch of an ex-wife. After all that she’s put Mike through, no one should even sympathize with her.
So your solution is “know your prospective spouse and understand that when you marry in it for the long haul?” Despicable!
The wife was secretly having an affair with her coworker and gave birth to that man’s child, and you dare defend the likes of her?
Simon, You can’t see the forrest from the Mike tree. I don’t side with Stephanie; I side with the State and the welfare of the children.
Why should taxpayers employ judge after judge after judge and his/her staff and pay for all the files and paper to deal with and fix the problems that the Mikes and Stephanies of the world create. The only loser if we step between Mike and Stephanie and her Tom, Dick and Harry are the tax payers pocket books at the purported children. If enough Mikes get burned, men will figure out they better not be a Mike.
American Girl, wtf are you smoking? The taxpayers are not paying the courts to fix the problems that the Mikes and Stephanies of the world create. The courts are there to make a judgement regarding custodial rights and financial responsibilities. That is what the taxpayers are employing the courts to do. There is no more or less money spent if the decision of the court was in Mike’s favor. And by making a ruling either way, the court is being an integral part of your personal life.
It is not absolutely guaranteed that the courts will rule that Mikes will have to pay child support. However, most judges rule that Mikes will have to pay child support because they are basing it on a standard that’s probably dated and doesn’t take into account situations where the wife is being a cheating, lying, gold digging whore and the biological dad is known. So we need to ask if that standard or precedence that is being used is fair, just, moral, and practical in these cases. Just because some judge says so or some legal standard is cited does not make it right.
“If enough Mikes get burned, men will figure out they better not be a Mike.” What does that even mean? Are you serious? What about if enough Stephanies get held responsible for cheating in a binding marriage, having a baby out of wedlock, and being a lying gold digging hoochie mama, women will figure out they better not be a Stephanie?
Applying your Mikey and Steffi response to the Tiger case, if Tiger’s wife did not have a prenup, would you have responded the same. Let’s say Tiger’s wife had no prenup and so she divorces Tiger and is awarded by the courts custody of the kids, a tidy sum of money, and alimony that affords her and the kids a much more modest lifestyle than the lifestyle they would have enjoyed had there been a prenup. Would you say she got what she deserved? Would you say, if she married Tiger, she has to realize she’s in it for the long haul? Would you say that if enough Elins get burned, women will figure out they better not be like Elin? Of course the two situations are not apples to apples, but I am curious how you would respond even with the flaws and differences in my comparison.
Lastly, I’m surprised that you would inject so much personal bias and emotion into your posts regarding Mikey and Steffie and also in your posts regarding Tiger considering that you practice law. What kind of lawyer are you again? Are you and Eric Jacobus good friends or something? Are you some kind of libertarian feminist?
And when I mean feminist above, I am referring to the ones who says they are feminist but only taint what that really means.
@American Girl:
Mike’s position is the reason we are arguing. Also, forest is spelled with one R.
Talk about rubbing salt into the wound. Correct me if I’m wrong about this but what you’re saying is along the lines of “Walk it off and learn from your mistakes” to a hit-and-run victim.
“Nobody made Mike marry Stephanie.” Would your response still be the same then if Mike was a battered wife? “Nobody made you marry that wife beater.”
Have you no shame American Girl?
What is with the personal attacks? Stephanie can choke on it for all I care. But what about the kids? You think hanging the kids out to dry because mommy and daddy are a bunch of eff-ups is fine?
And yes, tax payers pay for judges to listen to story after story and it is always a he said she said, “he beats me up, she’s a bitch, he cheated, she cheated, why does he get three pillows and I only get one,” over and over again. Every Mike, Simon and misogynist thinks his case is so special. When the courts make a bright line rule, everyone knows what to expect.
That is, everyone gets the same shit sandwich instead of build your own shit sandwiches (mayo, cheese, hold the kids, the first and third are mine, but not the second and fourth, I need seven years of palimony and medical insurance.) Whe courts hand out shit sandwiches, word spread and people avoid lineing up. This has been going on for years, even when DNA testing came out.
Here is the message from Mike’s case: marry a slut, be deemed father to whatever bastard she pops out and eat shit sandwiches for 18 years. How to avoid shit sandwich, marry a good girl and treat her and your kids well and don’t get a divorce.
Simon: Hit and run victim did not choose which car hit him/her. Mike had a chance to vet Stephanie. Maybe none of this was a picnic for Stephie either, maybe Mike was a PUA, maybe she jumped at the first guy she thought would by her a 1/5 carat ring, maybe Mike was bad in bed, maybe Mike watched Jerry Springer all day while she pounded the pavement to keep him stocked with beer and cigarrettes, maybe he was psychologically abusive, maybe he gave her the clap, maybe he was steril and told her to go to the sperm bank for a frozen pop so they could have a baby (which we know in this scenario is not the case, but for some others, it may be), there may be more to the story than has been told, but frankly, why should we listen to ever trailer trash story. It could be plain and simple that Stephanie duped him for his money. Mike made a judgment, unfortunately for him it was a bad one. It might have been just as bad or worse for Stephanie, too.
mt:
Prenup or not, courts don’t award kids to the cheater, primary custody of children vest in the primary caregiver, which would be in your Tiger/Elin scenario Elin. So Tiger can stick his dumbstick wherever he wants and give Elin whatever gift that is or is not cured by penicillin, the kids are still his.
What if Tiger fathered a dozen kids with as many mistresses who all file paternity suit and went after him for child support? Guess what, he’d have to pay child support; unless of course the mistress is married, perhaps? Does Elin get to bitch that she is the wife and the one or dozen cases of child support is eating into her martial estate? The court wouldn’t care what Elin would have to say. Elin married a cad, the best person to know that aside from Tiger, would have been Elin. Tiger pays child support, Elin would have to suck it.
AG out.
@American Girl: It got personal when you lumped me into the same category as a misogynist.
I don’t have a problem with your “think of the children” argument, but I do have a problem with you blaming the victim. You’re assuming that Mike already knew that his wife was cheating on him, and that he knew that it wasn’t his daughter.
Go back and reread the article AG. Don’t assume things about others.
Simon:
1. It is your own presumption that I lump you in as a misogynist. Is Mike a misogynist?
2. It is always about the children.
Articles are written to tug at your heart strings not about justice. As the article points out, in order to achieve the “moral and virtuous” sense of justice, all must give up privacy and freedom by submitting to mandatory DNA testing at birth. (Page 9 of 9, see also Justice, episode 9.) Personally, I am not willing to give up my privacy and freedom because a handful of others are reckless and immoral with his or her own personal affairs.
Stephanie obviously is not virtuous, but if Stephanie were moral, she would reimburse or refuse or some how release Mike from the child support obligation. How would that affect L? Would Stephanie refuse to let L see Mike? How would that affect L or Mike for that matter? I bet it would cost more than $7,500 a year.