This assumes you did not adopt them. In the aforesaid scenario do yo have any legal or financial obligations toward those children from a previous marriage if you get divorced a year after you marry?
If not, wwould this change if it was 5 or 10 years after you married that you got divorced?
You are in Canada… Supreme court decision.
Basically the logic is that being a parent is not a relationship with a child that you can arbitrarily, unilateraly terminate after you take it on. If you act like a parent (take them to school, give permission slips to school, take them to a doctor, sign consent forms, interact as if you were a parent) then you become a parent. After that, you are always their parent.
Your mileage may vary by state law. (Family law is provincial jurisdiction in Canada, but divorce/custody is federal if it is a legal marriage. So if you did not marry in the cCanadian case, some provinces yes, some provinces no. )
This of course then begs the question “can a woman be collecting support from multiple ‘fathers’ simultaneously”? Which apparently is possible, again depends on things like marriage, local law, and how expensive your lawyer was.
US here
I have a friend who married a woman who had a son from a previous relationship. AFAIK, he owes the kid nothing, married or divorced or others unless he adopts. Which isn’t gonna happen since the kid’s dad is still around and is a real asshole.
/Good on my friend, he’s a proper father figure to this poor kid. Puts up with far more shit than I ever would from a kid, mine or otherwise, but maintains a “tough but loving” home. Kid has improved like 300% in the years friend has been stepdad.
The state laws vary so you really will have 50 answers for the USA alone, plus answers for DC and other territories.
As a broad general rule the step-parent has no support obligation, but this depends on many factors
The biggest is how the step-parent acted during the marriage and how long the marriage was for.
I recall a case in NJ which required the step father to pay, and to make matters more complex said, the support paid by the step father in no way relieves the biological father the obligation to pay. In other words BOTH could be hit with support payments
A quick Google search of court cases shows the fact usually step parents don’t pay support after a marriage ends, but it also show many cases where the step parent had to pay up
I think it’s pretty subjective and depends on how long you were around, how much of a father you were, and how much your money changed the kid’s life. If you married a woman with a 16 year old in joint custody who calls you by your first name and you guys get divorced a couple months later, you are almost certainly off the hook.
If you marry a woman who has a baby that grows up it’s whole life calling you “dad”, use your own money to send the kid to expensive private schools, and then decide to bugger off when the kid is in his Junior year, you are probably going to be expected to pay something, if just to get the kid through school.
The general idea is that the kid’s shouldn’t take a massive lifestyle hit based on their parents’ romantic whims. So if you are a major part of their lives, you’ll probably be expected to continue to be a part financially.
That was the reasoning, roughly, of the Canadian Supreme Court. Once you take on the role of parent, legally or simply by actions, you cannot just arbitrarily unilaterally quit it. Of course, you can - they just decided to make the non-father (99% of the time) pay anyway.
Based upon the OP’s scenario of a year long marriage to the mom, I would say no, you would most likely not owe any child support for the step kids.
Did you need to know the answer fast?
A year, unless he adopts, as a practical matter, no way. Illinois, the state with which I am familiar, has no provisions for non-parental support. The existence of the child might figure into a court’s decision as to how much maintenance the mother would get. After a year of marriage, that wouldn’t be much. This is a “what will happen 90% of the time” answer, not one that considers weird variations.