Another example of Futurist’s paranoia about being somehow, someway, forced to pay child support.
Here’s the thing. How does the biological parentage of the child come into play?
They don’t do DNA tests on newborn babies to make sure the father on the birth certificate is the biological father of the baby. When you go to the hospital you just write down the father’s name, and that’s that. No more questions are asked.
The only time it happens is when the paternity of the baby is under some sort of dispute. And the only people with standing to dispute paternity are the mother, one or more of the putative fathers, or the child, or someone acting as guardian of the child.
Now, as per your supposed hypothetical. No, the person who gets a woman pregnant is not legally responsible if she subsequently dies. Just like people who are driving are not legally responsible just because they hit someone who dies. You’re only legally responsible if you were negligent or reckless or intentionally caused the accident. If you’re driving along and someone falls into the road and you hit them, you’re not legally responsible for their death, despite the fact that if you hadn’t been driving down that road at that particular time the person would still be alive. If you call someone on the phone, and they stop in the middle of the intersection to answer and get run over, you’re not responsible for their death, even though if you hadn’t called they wouldn’t have got distracted. So simply getting a woman pregnant does not make you legally responsible for her medical bills, lost income, or death.
You might be legally responsible to pay to support the child, but the death or injury of the mother is irrelevant. So this has nothing to do with anything.
Now, are you actually going to be on the hook for child support? That depends. Are you the legal parent of the child? Then you’re on the hook for child support. Now, if you fuck a married woman with her husband’s knowledge, and she gets pregnant, and her husband knows you’re the genetic father of the child, does that mean you’re on the hook for child support? It depends on if you or the mother or the husband have some sort of dispute about the paternity of the baby.
If nobody says anything, the husband of the woman becomes the legal father of the baby. This is a long-standing legal principle, that the husband of a woman is presumed to be the father of her children unless they dispute paternity. And in many cases, even if you wanted to assert paternity of the child, you would not be allowed to do so. The state has no interest in assigning paternity to someone other than the woman’s husband, no matter how much you want to be the baby’s daddy, her husband is the legal father.
So the only way you could be assigned legal paternity is if the woman asserted you were the father, or if the husband asserted you were the father. Is that happening? How can we know? If the mother is dead then she can’t say anything. So what does the husband do? Does he decide that he’s not interested in raising your child, and dispute paternity of the baby, or does he keep the baby? It’s up to him.
But note that if he decides to dispute paternity, that doesn’t mean you get to pay child support for the next 18 years. Child support is something a non-custodial parent pays to the custodial parent. But who is the custodial parent? The mother? She’s dead. The husband? He’s not the legal father of the baby. That leaves you as the sole parent of the baby, and therefore you don’t owe child support to anyone. You are, however, responsible for caring for this baby. But you don’t get to just write a check for $400 a month and you’re done. You’re responsible for actually caring for the baby, which means actually caring for the baby.
However, one way you can care for the baby is to put the baby up for adoption. There’s a waiting list a mile long for a healthy white baby, so don’t worry about that.
So no, in no case could you be responsible for paying child support in this convoluted situation. Either you’re the sole legal parent of the baby, in which case you put the baby up for adoption, or the husband is the sole legal parent of the baby, in which case you have no legal rights or responsibilities or relationship to the baby.