I’m also wondering about the baby’s paternernal grandparents. The father has been clear about not wanting to play a role; but does he have the right to keep the existence of his offspring a secret to his parents? Perhaps they’d love to be grandparents.
I’m not sure about the ethics of all that, though.
I wonder about the paternal grandparents, also. The guy has chosen not to tell them because, I guess, he thinks ‘the problem’ will just go away if he doesn’t mention it?
Wrong.
I still think Cazzle should press for child support. If he is assessed even as little $100.00 a month, Cazzle would be giving away over $20,000 of her daughter’s money.
In the US, if Cazzle ever needs public assistance in the next 18 years, he may get tapped for child support. Would he be required to make up for all the years he didn’t pay? Would Cazzle be doing him a favor by having him pay the smaller amounts regularly rather than being assessed a larger amount at some later date?
I am not a fan on ‘family secrets’. I think they are harmful and that everyone is better off when all the cards are on the table.
I worried about his parents too - this is why I specified to him that the door would always be open to him or any member of his family who wanted to get to know her. However, I don’t know them at all - never met them, don’t know a thing about them - and I’ve decided not to seek them out. If they are good people then it’s a shame that Annabel is going to miss out on them (and they on her) but what if they aren’t? What if they’re a bunch of nutcases, trouble-makers and weirdos? I fear opening a Pandora’s Box if I try to do the right thing by some people I’ve never met. It’s his decision not to tell his family and it should be on his conscience, not mine.
We met yesterday and had a talk, and I think it went reasonably well even though we didn’t come to any ultimate resolution yet. I did my utmost to explain why having the correct information on the birth certificate is so important to me, and we discussed why he’s so reluctant for involvement. He believed that, along with our agreement that he didn’t need to be involved, we’d also agreed that he would be anonymous but I argued that it simply wasn’t practical. I asked him what he’d have me tell Annabel when she inevitably asks about her father and he couldn’t answer me.
He said he’d feel more comfortable knowing for sure that she’s his before he commits to signing anything and I said I’d do the same in his position and that if he wanted DNA testing done, I’d make sure a sample of her DNA was made available as soon as possible after her birth. He has asked for time to seek legal advice and I agreed - the reason I’ve brought this up now, three months before she’s due, is to give us both time to sort everything out before it becomes a matter of urgency, rather than springing it on him at the last minute.
I hope he thinks I’m being reasonable about this. He did say that he feels “boxed in” and “railroaded”, as though he has no choice but to sign no matter how reluctant he is to do so, but I hope he can see how much I’m not asking of him, and how this one thing is so very important to me. He also grumbled that no mention was made of this when we last spoke (mere days after I found out I was pregnant), but I pointed out that I was still shock then, and hadn’t thought that far ahead just yet. It wasn’t an act of deception.
My understanding is that it’s the same here. If I ever need to claim the Sole Parent’s Pension they will pursue him for child support payments. I’ll cross that bridge if/when I come to it, but I’ve been told the only reasons they would let him off is if I sign a declaration that I don’t know who her father is, or that I fear he’ll become abusive toward me. I’m not prepared to tell either of those lies for his benefit. I think I’ve made it clear to him that I’ll strive to be fair toward him except where that would be unfair to Annabel.
I’m feeling much better than I was a few days ago and having a chance to speak to him in person (rather than via bloody SMS) has helped no end. I will be taking TLD’s fine advice and speaking to my solicitor sometime very soon.
I am very glad to hear you’re going to be seeing a solicitor.
And my best wishes for you, and Annabel Rose.
If you choose going for child support as being the right thing for you, after talking to the solicitor, don’t let yourself be brainwashed to accept the idea that you, and you alone, are ruining Annabel’s father’s life. Child support is not ruining anyone’s life. It’s a stress, and a burden, but it’s not the difference between a good life and a miserable one. Don’t accept guilt for it, either. Remorse is your privilege, of course - but guilt to my mind encompasses blame.
If you choose to continue to avoid any forced contacts with Annabel’s father, don’t let anyone try to guilt you into going after him for money after the fact. The extra support may be nice, but by denying it to Annabel, it’s not automatically depriving her. There are so many factors involved I can’t begin to list them all. If you choose to change your mind, that too is your choice. Make it for your own reasons, not those imposed on you by well-meaning strangers. (Even me.)
I will say that I’ve got a former housemate who has two children. They are fathered by two different men, and a third man had accepted responsibility for the second child for reasons that seemed good to him at the time.
Now both the fathers of record are being brought forward to pay child support. It’s an unholy mess, and no one is dealing with the situation well. I am more than a little horrified at how the children are being bounced around because the two adults who claim, for the record, to be only interested in the best interests of the child involved. It’s a vile, depression situation, and it’s affecting the mental health of both children, too.
I have no reason to believe that you or your baby’s father are that willing to be myopic. But I never would have imagined any of these people would have done this, either, before the fact.
Just my gut feeling.
So Cazzle lays the situation before him, gives him what she thinks is a fair choice, he exercises the choice and now he’s a dick for doing so? If Cazzle were the one calling him a dick, I’d call it passive-aggressive.
Yup, and if the only effective female contraceptive entailed rubbing local anaesthetic into your clitoris, whereas men had a whole slew of different contraceptives available, most of them invisible at the point of use, I guess you’d find that unfair too.
Maybe Cazzle acknowledges that she had at least as much to do with the decision to have sex as Mr Dick did, and wasn’t just a helpless victim of a pick up line in a bar. Indeed, there’s no “maybe” about it - I’ve nothing but admiration for her sense of ethics.
I just wanted to say I think **OtakuLoki **gives great advice.
Feeling forced into extracting money (because you might be depriving Annabel), or, for biodad, feeling forced into having to pay money, both generally bring out the worst in people.
Money, especially in the States, means so much more then sustenance; it means security, respect, acknowledgement. But all those can be obtained in other ways as well, (you and your daughter could rightly feel proud and self-supporting if you got by without paid support). And just as often money can stand in the way of achieving those things.
When my ex and I divorced three years ago, (I was the “guilty” party) I took great care not to exercise my “rights” to half of our posessions. As a result, I now have a great neighbourly friendship with my ex, easy communication, and no ill-will whatsoever. Recently he has started to redecorate his house, and I find he now asks of his own accord, whenever he is replacing something, if I want to call dibs on it, and it is solved easy. And any, any of those items could have been the stake of a bitter fight, costing us both so much more in peace of mind.
Cazzle, I’d do some checking before you promise DNA tests so soon. Where I live, we were told that unless it’s medically necessary, doctors won’t draw blood for DNA testing before the age of two. This came out during a discussion about whether our twins sons were identical or fraternal, where it was pointed out that only genetic testing can prove it beyond a doubt (identical twins can have separate amniotic sacs). The Parents of Multiple Births literature we had said that most jurisdictions had the same rules.
On the other hand, I vote that you list Teeming Millions as the father, and we’ll be her Dad. 
AIUI, Cerowyn, these days for paternity tests blood samples are not necessary, a simple cheek swab is often all that’s needed. Considering the things that babies have been known to put into their mouths, sterile cotton swabs, while not what I’d consider a repeat winner, aren’t going to be a major stress, either.
Whether the labs in Cazzle’s neck of the woods use that technique is another question, of course.
Maastricht, Thanks.
For what it’s worth, we did use contraceptives. The condom broke but I wasn’t worried, I just took the morning-after pill as backup. After I realised I was pregnant, I went back and checked the instructions and was horrified to discover that I’d read them wrong and so had taken an insufficient dosage. I still don’t know how I made that mistake, but it was entirely my fault the backup failed. Incidentally, the prescription for the Implanon implant was sitting on my desk awaiting my period to arrive so I could have it fitted. I had decided to get the implant because of my terrible memory for taking pills at the same time each day - I had feared I’d risk an unwanted pregnancy if I didn’t opt for something I couldn’t forget to take, and the implant offers three years of protection. Despite the fact that I had been diagnosed infertile four years earlier, I didn’t want to risk it. I had stopped taking the Pill in anticipation of getting the implant, and given that I had sex that month on one single occasion - at a time which, by my calculation, should have been too early in my cycle to carry any real risk of pregnancy anyway - and… well, this all contributes to why I feel like she was meant to be.
I do not even know how I’d begin to explain that one to my parents… 
One of the better looking Doper men could show up wearing a badge that says “Hello! My name is… TEEMING” and make some veiled references to The Regiment before disappearing again. I’m telling you, it could work.
On the other hand, I do have to consider the possibility that my kids will have to go to Australia to find women that haven’t heard of them, and it wouldn’t do to be a sort-of-dad to one of the candidates…
You were diagnosed infertile, should have been too early in the cycle anyway, he used a condom anyway (waves upthread) and when it broke you used a morning-after pill, and still got knocked up? Cazzle, with a start like that your little unexpected arrival is going to need some watching!
Hope it all goes well for you.
Yeah, it is just possible that I’m expecting the anti-Christ (Then again, who ever heard of an anti-Christ named Annabel?). Fate was afoot that night.
To be fair, I did have an idea that the doctors might have been wrong about that. They started out presuming my slight hormone imbalance was responsible for our inability to conceive, but later on realised my ex had some infertility problems of his own that were far, far more serious. I still thought I might have some trouble if I did decide to have children with someone else, but thought his problems were more likely responsible for our inability to conceive in four years of trying which is why I was attempting to err on the side of caution.