Parental Rights Questions: why does the mom seemingly always win.

Started by Callie Del Noire, June 13, 2012, 10:01:01 AM

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Pumpkin Seeds

She’s currently taking care of them, so I would say she is being responsible for them.  He on the other hand tried to wiggle out of his responsibilities by trying to sign away his parental rights.  More than likely that made the judge angrier if he actually brought that up in court.  The man in question would have been given enough to live on if he had followed the steps to paying child support through the court.  If he had been smart about it and gone through the proper channels, he would have had a strong case if he was supporting her through the entire pregnancy.  Instead he went with the verbal agreement and cash payments for unknown amounts.  Even if he had just used checks instead of cash he would have been able to show payments, just right child support or something on the check.

TheGlyphstone

As a semi-hypothetical tangent, PumpkinSeeds, do you also consider people who put their children up for adoption as 'wiggling out of their responsibilities'? Signing away parental rights is part of that process, after all- the only difference here is that the 'adopting' parent happens to already be the biological parent.

Pumpkin Seeds

Giving a child up for adoption is in a way “wiggling out of the responsibility.”  Many of the people who give their children up for adoption will say they cannot handle the responsibility and cannot afford the care.  So the parent(s) of the child give the baby over to a larger institution or another family with the understanding that this family can and will care for the child. 

The difference here is that this man impregnated a woman and then attempted to get out of offering monetary assistance for his child, despite her ability and willingness to care for the child.  In effect he wanted to just remove himself from the equation thinking that was easiest for him, not for the child.  He was trying to do what was best for him, not the child. 

Parents giving their child up for adoption are doing what’s best for the child, in theory at least if not always in practice.  There is a difference between the two.

Torch

Quote from: Chris Brady on June 26, 2012, 06:32:56 PM
No, no. no, no.  This is totally and completely false.

No, the COURTS want proof,

Right, which is why I stated:

QuoteCash payments under the table can't be proven in a court of law.

Quote from: Chris Brady on June 26, 2012, 06:32:56 PMSeriously, people will believe anything if a close source tells them.

Yes, such as vague, unsubstantiated statements on message boards which have no basis in fact other than the author's opinion. I've read quite a few of those on this forum.

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elone

Have been pondering whether or not to weigh in on this discussion. Having been one who paid child support for 16 years, I can attest to the courts being biased toward women. I never in all that time missed a payment yet was taken to court 3 times, had to produce all cancelled checks as my ex claimed she did not get the money, just to have all allegations dismissed. Each court appearance required legal counsel on my part costing me thousands of dollars, the state paid hers. Finally, I requested that my payments be made to social services instead of to the ex. The court agreed and the problem was solved.

At one point, the ex put my child in the care of her grandmother and did not pass on the support payments. She pocketed them. Then she had the nerve to request that payments continue past my daughters 18th birthday. The judge fortunately saw that she was no longer being cared for by her mother and ended that.

And by the way, support payments based in gross salary as stated above, are a little off track. They should be based more on net salary as long as deduction from the paychecks are not excessive.

Unlike alimony, child support is not a tax deductible expense, and is a taxable income for the recipient. Someone should check to see if this woman is declaring her child support as income.
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TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Pumpkin Seeds on June 26, 2012, 08:41:34 PM
Giving a child up for adoption is in a way “wiggling out of the responsibility.”  Many of the people who give their children up for adoption will say they cannot handle the responsibility and cannot afford the care.  So the parent(s) of the child give the baby over to a larger institution or another family with the understanding that this family can and will care for the child. 

The difference here is that this man impregnated a woman and then attempted to get out of offering monetary assistance for his child, despite her ability and willingness to care for the child.  In effect he wanted to just remove himself from the equation thinking that was easiest for him, not for the child.  He was trying to do what was best for him, not the child. 

Parents giving their child up for adoption are doing what’s best for the child, in theory at least if not always in practice.  There is a difference between the two.

Except in this case he was never given the option to be a parent for 'his' child, if the story so far is accurate. The mother cut out and ran before giving birth, and regards him as nothing beyond a source of cash to support herself (and keep the child alive). Moreso, if he specifically didn't want kids and ended up with one anyways via either accident or malice (unsubstantiated here, but I've heard other stories of sabotaged condoms for the purpose of creating these scenarios), isn't it in the best interest of the child that he not have any interaction with it at all, financially or socially?

Pumpkin Seeds

Actually, according to Serephino the baby was born and then she left.  Honestly he could have filed kidnapping charges if he wanted to get the child back.  Then if he had his child visitation revoked by a judge, so there was some ability of him to be a father to this child. 

Just because a parent or parents does not want a pregnancy or the resulting baby, does not make them unfit parents or detrimental to the child’s well-being.  Plenty of pregnancies were unplanned and the parents raised the child.  Certainly if the father is abusive mentally or physically to the child then there should be no social interaction.  Cannot imagine a plus to having financial support removed from a child’s care though.

Chris Brady

I was one of them, Pumpkin Seeds.  I was completely unplanned.

However, it does bring up a question.  If giving away his parental visitations is 'wiggling our of his responsibility', doesn't that mean abortion is what women do to get out of it on their end?  And I'm not talking about the ones that are necessary because of the severe negative impact that having a child would have on her health.  I'm talking about the ones who 'made a mistake' and didn't ever want a child.
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Pumpkin Seeds

Quote from: Chris Brady on June 27, 2012, 12:02:54 AM
However, it does bring up a question.  If giving away his parental visitations is 'wiggling our of his responsibility', doesn't that mean abortion is what women do to get out of it on their end?  And I'm not talking about the ones that are necessary because of the severe negative impact that having a child would have on her health.  I'm talking about the ones who 'made a mistake' and didn't ever want a child.

I am going to bow out of this discussion due to that comment there. 

Shjade

Quote from: Pumpkin Seeds on June 27, 2012, 12:57:13 AM
I am going to bow out of this discussion due to that comment there.

To be fair, you did "open the door" on that one by derailing the conversation into whether or not the father was trying to shirk responsibility, which had nothing to do with what was being discussed.
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Oniya

Okay, this one has me shaking my head:

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/06/27/cops-mom-abuses-daughter-sends-videos-tots-dad

The URL really says it all (although to make the words more accurate, there should be a colon between 'cops' and 'mom'), but the gist is that this woman sends 50-55 texts and 8 videos to her child's father (who promptly had his father call cops upon viewing them at the grandfather's home), that the police have managed to extract and view.  The woman's mother tells the police that her daughter suffers from bipolar disorder, obsessive-deviant disorder, is confrontational and violent, and suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of her first child.

The child is now in the maternal grandmother's care - the same woman who knew about her daughter's violent tendencies, and doesn't seem to have mentioned them to anyone until now.
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Chris Brady

So instead of giving the kid to his/her dad, they're still forced to live on the maternal side of the family?  Correct me if I'm wrong (and seriously, please do!) but I was under the impression that children usually go to the closest immediate family in this sort of case.  Right?
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Oniya

That seems to be the impression given by a good 90% of the comments so far ('Why isn't the baby with daddy now!?' is a typical comment from both men and women).  I've seen one poster say that she read an article saying the dad didn't want/couldn't get custody, and she's trying to track down the article now.  Some are suspicious of the fact that grandpa called the cops instead of dad, but I pointed out that if I was in a similar situation, I'd want a coherent person calling the cops - and that would not likely be me.
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Oniya

That would be the one.  I find a few things odd about both warrants (his and hers).  The Vece warrant is dated with a court date of 3/23/12, filed on 3/12/12.  So, that's over and done with - i.e., he doesn't currently have a warrant out on him.  There might still be a protective order, if that order was filed on behalf of the minor child as well as the mother.  A collapsed lung without signs of a struggle seems - odd.  Not saying it couldn't happen, just that it's odd.

The Park warrant (dated 6/20/12) lists that Vece said that the maternal grandmother would be a good caretaker (which sounds like an approval of the choice, not 'Don't give her to me!'), as well as that the maternal grandmother is in the process of trying to get custody of Park's other child (a 2-y-o).  I wonder at the fact that the 10-month-old wasn't already included on that petition to get custody, although I'm now more optimistic that the grandmother will not be simply dropping the baby back off when Park is out of custody (either psychiatric or legal).

I'm passing along that link to the warrants - very interesting reading.
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Valerian

Quote from: Oniya on June 27, 2012, 03:34:14 PM
A collapsed lung without signs of a struggle seems - odd.  Not saying it couldn't happen, just that it's odd.
Lungs can collapse spontaneously, though it's rare.  Cigarette smoking can be a factor, though it also happened to a friend of mine who was a non-smoker.  He was, however, tall and very thin, which according to his doctor is also a risk factor for a spontaneous collapse.  In any case, for some people, lungs can collapse either without any trauma at all, or with only very minimal trauma that might not leave any outward signs.

Otherwise, about all I can say is that I hope Child Protective Services is keeping a very close eye out.
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Serephino

I can't really make much out of that, but it could be a false allegation.  Crazy women aren't above such things.  I've heard my neighbor tell her ex that if he doesn't stop trying to get custody she's going to go the police and say he raped her.  Police always believe rape victims.  She clearly doesn't have brains enough to realize she lives in a duplex and we can hear her....  She also abuses and neglects the hell out of her kids.  If she can't find a babysitter she just leaves them home alone for days at a time.  These aren't teenagers either.  They have to borrow my can opener to eat.  Tell me again the mother is always the better choice for custody. 

Oniya

Quote from: Valerian on June 27, 2012, 03:52:09 PM
Otherwise, about all I can say is that I hope Child Protective Services is keeping a very close eye out.

You and me both.

Quote from: Serephino on June 27, 2012, 03:58:26 PM
I can't really make much out of that, but it could be a false allegation.  Crazy women aren't above such things. 


The doctor's report lends credence, but the scene description and the fact that she couldn't describe if he hit, punched, or kicked her is 'off' to my eyes, in the 'want to know more' sense.  I didn't see any broken bones listed, or contusions (bruises), although the officer might not have written all that down.  (I might not be able to tell a 'hit' from a 'punch', but a kick to the ribs is going to be a different sort of experience, especially if it occurs before the knockdown.  Shoes feel different.)

Out of curiosity, Sere, have you ever called CPS on your neighbor?
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Pumpkin Seeds

No Shjade, I did not open the door to abortion.  I also did not derail the thread, but I was pointing out that the male figure did not want the child which shined some light on why his child custody is so high.  Meaning that the situation, as I made mention, has other variables.  I do not agree with making use of a hot button topic like abortion in order to defend a point or win a discussion.  A father signing away parental rights in order to avoid child custody payments and abortion are different topics entirely.  Abortion has a great many morale, legal and emotional baggage attached to the topic.  There is simply not a comparison between the two.

Abortions, when outright illegal, were still sought after by women through “back alley abortions.”  Women would spend a considerable amount of resources to travel to states that offered them.  Women bleed to death, went into septic shock, died horrible deaths in order to have an abortion.  Today women have the option of legal abortions.  They still pay a large amount of money for what amounts to a surgical procedure on their bodies.  These women wade through picket lines, have to endure sonograms shoved into their faces and lectures mandates by the state for physicians to give.  Furthermore they live with the emotional trauma for the rest of their lives.

http://www.afterabortion.org/Survey2.htm

Key points:
54% of women Strongly Agree that their choice to have an abortion can be described as an agonizing one.
52% of women strongly disagree that the memory of their abortion faded over time.
59% of women strongly disagree that they received counseling prior to the abortion.

The reasons for abortion are varied and often intermingled.  Points that regularly come up are lack of support from the partner and family of the woman, responsibility to others and limitations on her life by others.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3711005.pdf

So can we leave abortion off the table now?

TheGlyphstone

But what does any of that actually have to do with the question he originally asked? If a man signing away parental rights because he doesn't want a child is ducking responsibility, why is a woman having an abortion because she doesn't want the child not ducking the same responsibility? All the other reasons why women would/would not have abortions isn't a factor in this instance.

Pumpkin Seeds

The man in this instance has nothing to lose whereas the woman has everything, including her life to lose.  These two comparisons are not even on the same wave length.  The man loses care of the child he did not want and loses any responsibility to pay/care for the child.  The woman risks losing her life, risks losing part of her mental health and loses money in order to not have a child.  The motivations are completely different as shown in the sources given.  Similiar to the discussion regarding adoption, the motivation is different. 

Serephino

Quote from: Oniya on June 27, 2012, 04:06:03 PM
You and me both.

Out of curiosity, Sere, have you ever called CPS on your neighbor?

Yes, we have.  Someone came out that afternoon, and we didn't see the kids for almost 2 months.  She always somehow manages to get them back.  I wish I had some warning before she starts screaming at the top of her lungs that she doesn't want them and orders them to pack their shit and get out.  I'd record it and hand it over to the dad so fast it would make her head spin.

Oniya

I thought I remembered you saying that somewhere else - it's a sad thing that I know so many people with neighbors like that.  :-\
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And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
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I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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Iniquitous

As someone who has placed a child up for adoption, I resent seeing someone claim it was me shirking my responsibility. You really shouldn't spout of things you know nothing about.

As for a man signing up his rights as a parent because he never wanted children - I think there is nothing wrong with that. Especially if he did take steps to try and prevent pregnancy and it happened anyway. If he knows he does not want to be a father, knows that he has no desire to spend time with the child, then let him sign over his rights. Better for everyone involved - child included - if he is not a part of that child's life at all.
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Pumpkin Seeds

A man can sign his rights away for a child he does not want, but he cannot sign away the responsibility.  He took all the steps to prevent pregnancy except for the one that is 100% guaranteed which is abstinence.  Now the woman is taking her responsibility, but he should not have to bear even the financial burden?  I can understand an argument that a reluctant father might be a determent to the child, though I think there are a lot of reluctant fathers out there that still do their best.  I can obviously understand a story of an abusive father or one that is harming the family being removed from the picture. 

Show me evidence that a child benefits from a loss of income to the household.  I want to see evidence that a father signing away his financial responsibility to a child is of benefit to anyone else but the father.

As for my words, I’m sorry if they offended.  I have nothing but the highest respect for the decision a father and mother make in placing their child for adoption.  For the pain they go through in order to preserve a better place for their child with the hands of another.  Takes a lot of courage to admit that something as monumental as childcare cannot be done and that help is needed.  I do not have respect for a man that attempts to sign away his child so he can save a few bucks a month.