Well, if we have a situation of a female Bill Gates as the mother, and the father being destitute, I am not sure how much child support would be enforced against the man anyway…
But I’ll stick by the premise that a court won’t enforce the contract in most situations. The father’s liability would be to the child, and no contract before hand would alter that. I don’t think you would get the court to award damages to the father against the mother, as public policy favors people paying for their children, and also being involved in their child’s life, and so contracts such as these seem likely to be voided. The time I can see it most likely to be enforceable would be in teh case of a sperm donor, and even those don’t get enforced, as far as I know.
(ETA - this is a response to Voyager’s post number 79)
Let’s try a hypothetical without as much emotional baggage. Suppose the idea floated many times in discussions of SSM were in effect and the legal and ceremonial/religious aspects of marriage were divorced(so to speak). For the legal institution of marriage to go into effect, a signed, notarized document must be filed with the courthouse. Two things need to happen for a legal marriage: Both parties must sign the document and either party must then take the document in to the courthouse and pay a fee. Further, in this hypothetical, there is no such thing as annulment. To end a marriage requires a divorce.
Suppose we have a couple who agree to get married, but only one can go to the courthouse. Both parties are nervous about the marriage and having second thoughts. Either party can call of the whole thing by not signing. After it is signed, the one going to the courthouse can put and end to it all the way up to the point it is handed to the clerk. There is an unfair period in which only one party has a choice, although that party also has to do more (go to the courthouse and pay the fee) to get that extra time. The system is not set up to be unfair, it just due to the necessary setup. In this hypothetical, the parties agreed to do it this way whereas in the real world, mother nature has decreed that the female party will always be the one to carry the child and give birth. In the hypothetical, the rules could be set up so that both parties must come to the courthouse, but no rule change is going to require men to carry half a fetus.
The biology is unequal. Nothing the law can do will make it so. We have to consider the best to work with it. In this case, we must remember that, at least in theory, child support has nothing to do with the other parent. It has to do with an existing child. If you were to argue that the current family court setup is often unfair, I would not dispute it. But this conflation of the two issues offers nothing to help that.
Here is another way mother nature is unfair. Women always know when they give birth. If a women so chooses, she can hide that fact from the father. Without universal paternity testing, a man may never know if he has a child out there. If the one lies about the father, or claims not to know who it is she can give it up for adoption without the fathers consent. Men don’t really have that option. But, if he knows of finds out before the adoption goes through, he can get custody, and he can sue her for support.
The problem as I see it is that society still considers the bearing of children to be a “good” thing, and have created laws to enforce such a belief.
Even given the necessary demands of biology, this issue boils down to the attacking of one wrong (unwanted pregnancy) with another (not giving the father equal rights). We should get over the assumed “miracle” of birth and just realize that we have orphanages and ought to use them. Both parents should be able to opt out of parenthood if they don’t want to be parents. The mother can easily decided either to have an abortion or give the kid up for adoption. The father, though he rightly should not have a say in the abortion, should still be able to renounce all rights as parent if he decides to.
I think its silly to say that this punishes the kid for something beyond his control. Our mostly Christian nation still is stuck in the archaic values of sex = pregnancy when its about as valid as saying breathing = smoking. The two things are completely separate, avoidable, and divorced from each other. Sex is a fun activity and doing it should not be seen as some kind of presumed acceptance of accidental (or otherwise) parenthood. So I reject the notion that the parents have inferred responsibilities just because they have sex. Sex is fun, thats all the inference we should make. If a kid results from that, then tough. Its unfair to strip the parents of rights anymore than the kid. It doesnt make it more fair to do that to the father at all
The laws have nothing to do with any presumed “miracle of childbirth,” and everything to do with forcing people to be accountable for feeding the children they create by their own voluntary actions. Your contention that people should have no responsibility for babies they create from having sex is absurd. If you don’t think the people who create the babies should be responsible for them, then why, pray tell, should the taxpayers – who had NOTHING to do with the creation of the babies – be responsible for them?
Any kind of potentially procreative intercourse is…well…potentially procreative. Every guy knows that before he sticks his dick in. Your contention that forcing fathers to be financially responsible for the lives that they create is somehow an imposition on their “rights” is complete hogwash. What “rights” would those be. Show me where the Constitution gives you a “right” to be free of responsibility for your children. Exactly what theory of civil rights are you trying to argue for here?
Both the welfare of the child and of the state supercede your imaginary right to have “fun” without responsibility. It does not serve the interest of either the state or the child to let the fathers skip out with no accountability for the financial burden that they created of their own free will.
You okay with, say, quadrupling your property taxes to pay for all these hungry kids? I’m not. Talk about unfairness, I didn’t even get any sex out of the deal!
Having dealt with family and friends and others about this…
Yes, I think that is what they want. They want to be able to ‘pin back their ears’ and ruthlessly pursue women. Possible child support means they might be called to task about children spawned and so they can’t just pursue relentlessly and have no consequences.
I’m thinking of 2 people in particular. They were attractive men and horn dogs. One ended up on the hook for child support and it pissed him off.
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In addition, it does seem that many people attach much more responsibility to the man dating the single mom (or step dad) than the father. Even on these boards I have seen many posters state that child support should stop when the mother moves in/marries another man.
Why? Is he no longer the father or something?
It’s an attitude that children ‘belong/responsibility of’ the mother and whatever man is in her life.
There was a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court case that ruled the father in a “friend-to-friend” sperm donation case was not liable for child support because he and the mother had agreed he would not be liable.
So, it seems to me that, in Pennsylvania at least, a man could sign away his liability along with parental rights as long as he and his partner sign a contract absolving him of liability (under the excuse of “donating sperm”) before they have sex.
So…best start carrying such Consent/Waiver forms with you to bars and parties!
This is a silly assertion. Is tennis about elbow problems? I like to mountain bike, but I don’t want to be injured in a fall. Should I expect others to pay for my injuries? Just because you don’t want a potential consequence of an activity does not make it go away. If you want sex without pregnancy, you can do it. You want to be 100% sure? Then don’t have sex involving penis in vagina. You want to do that you have to access and accept the risks, be they STDs, pregnancy, or just an unwanted emotional attachment.
I know several women who never pursued child support because they didn’t want the father in their lives. The money simply wasn’t worth the aggravation. Unfortunately for the sperm donors they cam change their mind years later.
I think this would work just the same if not better. As long as these contracts are fully legal and enforceable. Then I could say “haha, stupid you” to a father of an unwanted kid for having sex without [legal] protection.
I am not saying the mother should be able to not tell the father, but rather to proactively write him off and ensure legally that she has full custody and that the father is legally disqualified to have a say on anything. This, of course, would/should mean that the father has no obligations either.
This is what I am talking about. Such document would be very empowering and fair to men. I am guessing it would lower someone’s chances of getting laid, if you need a notary and a girl who is ok with having to go it alone (in writing, between drinks and bed). Still this puts the ball right on the men’s court and allows them to have control of their circumstances.
Although I agree with everything else on this post and share you WTFness at Yog’s post, I keep being troubled at this line (and the many times it has already been said by you and others on this thread).
It somehow makes it sound like it is the men who have irresponsible sex while women are suffering victims. Women also know this and are also free to enter into sex in much the same way as men.
Once again, I am not advocating anything. If 100% is the fair thing, then that’s what it is. I have by no means given this full thought. Bear with me a little. I am trying to see other people’s ways, try to meet me halfway and then drag me to where you think I need to be.
I can see it now. We sell little contract kits right next to the condoms in drug stores and supermarkets. The ads would be great - “Be Doubly Protected. Trojan Contracts.” We need a little breathalyzer to produce a paper showing that neither party was intoxicated. We could make a car version with a little leaner, a pen, and a flashlight.
Scene: Deserted spot, with a car. A young couple in the spacious backseat of the Chevrolet are fumbling with each others’ clothes. Just as the act is about to happen, there is a loud knock at the door.
He: The Cops!
She: My father!
Cut to the guy standing outside - a nice middle aged man in a suit.
Man: No, I’m attorney Joe Buzzkill from Trojan Contracts. Sir, did you ever consider what would happen if she became pregnant?
He: (confused) Pregnant?
Joe: You’d be paying child support, that’s what.
She: But he’s using a condom.
Joe: Even high quality condoms fail sometime. Whips out the contract kit. Now if you both sign here, you’ll be free of liability.
They sign, with the girl just barely holding up her unbuttoned blouse. This ad is for the guys after all.
Final shot: Joe facing camera, with car in background, bouncing.
Joe: Trojan Contracts: Be protected both ways. Available wherever Trojans are sold.
So you want the woman to be able to remove the father’s rights and responsibilities with or without his consent?
Both men and women need to be aware of the consequences before having sex. Everything we do has some potential consequences, and we all should be aware of them. Drive my car to work tomorrow exposes me to the risk of an accident, but not going to work could get me fired. That doesn’t mean the world is unfair. If a man puts his penis in a woman he could get her pregnant, if a women lets a man put his penis in her vagina, she could get pregnant. The only difference is that only one of them can get pregnant. The law has to deal with that fundamental inequality. In an ideal world, no one could get pregnant without wanting to and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
So, women have the advantage that they get an extra choice them don’t, but they also are required to take risks the men do not.
This might be a hijack, I’m not sure - if it is, let me know. Anyway, why is it that “punishing the child” is almost always brought up in these sorts of discussions? I personally don’t think that anyone should have the right to go after a father for child support if that man was against the pregnancy from the beginning. But that won’t happen because somehow it “punishes” the child if it is raised with any less than the maximum amount of money that can be extracted from the father. Why is it OK to raise children in the squalor of the average slum, but if a woman decides she wants to have a baby the father has to help financial to raise it no matter what his opinion is, and no matter what the financial situation of the woman is. Particularly when there is no oversight as to what the woman does with the child support she gets.
Can someone explain this? If there is some magic minimum amount of money needed to properly raise a child, then why are so many allowed to be raised under that amount? If that magic amount doesn’t exist, why screw the men who never wanted to be fathers?
