Open marriage, death, and child support question

Great Debates
1

If a woman who is in an open marriage has sex with a man other than her husband, gets pregnant as a result of this sex, chooses to carry this pregnancy to term, and dies as a result of this pregnancy or as a result of complications from this pregnancy, then should the man who impregnated this woman be forced to pay financial support to this woman’s husband and especially to this woman’s children? After all, based on the causation principle, this man would be responsible for this woman’s death and for this woman’s children being left motherless and being put in a much worse financial situation than they previously were.

Any thoughts on this? Also, I would like to point out that unlike causing a child to exist (which is a gift rather than a harm), causing a woman’s death and leaving this woman’s children motherless is a harm. After all, this put this woman’s children in a much worse financial situation than they previously were.

2
  1. I don’t think you can get away with saying “I am gifting you with an unwanted pregnancy”
  2. Unless the guy has foreknowledge that causing her to become pregnant will in all likelihood kill her, I don’t he gets the blame for her death, either.
3

Causing someone (the child) to come into existence is a gift, though. However, causing someone (the woman) to get pregnant is a harm. However, child support is for the child, not for the woman; thus, my point about existence being a gift still appears to be valid.

Can’t any pregnancy become life-threatening or result in life-threatening complications, though? After all, I seem to remember pro-choicers complaining about the risk of women unexpectedly dying from pregnancy or from pregnancy complications in spite of the fact that the risk of this is extremely small. Thus, how exactly would you argue that death from pregnancy is not reasonably foreseeable?

4

No-they are both just natural events. How you take them is up to the individual.

5

Indeed, I would probably argue that there are more grounds for a man to pay financial support to the woman whom he got pregnant than to the child whom he helped cause to exist.

6

I’m sorry–what?

7

How is this different than the question you posed in post #25 of this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=770889

8

Some women don’t want babies, but feel obligated through religion and/or family to follow through on unwanted pregnancies-they might not would consider such a child to be a “gift”.
Other women love to be pregnant, believe it or not.

9

What difference does it make if they people are married or not. If your “causation principle” is legally valid, the parents of a woman who died in childbirth could sue the husband for “wrongful death”. The idea is complete nonsense.

Every act of sex could be a potential lawsuit.

10

These definitions are meaningless without context. I can easily disagree with the first statement in some cases, and I disagree with the second in almost all cases. Once again you are trying to assert universal truths from your very limited range of experiences.

11

If the woman consented to the sex, then she consented to the risk of pregnancy and thus the risks of being pregnant. Unless the man had radioactive or poisonous sperm or something and failed to disclose this, he displayed no negligence that should constitute a tort.

12

Functional adults enter into situations fraught with risk every day, and are prepared to accept the consequences without planning who to sue if things do go wrong.

13

Oo! Oo! I’ve got a one!!

Suppose you take a woman out to dinner. You suggest she have the chicken breast. As she is eating, she chokes on a chicken bone and dies. Would you be responsible for child support? After all, you were the one who suggested she have the chicken breast, and according to the “causation principle” caused her to die.

14

And yes - it is entirely possible for the biological father to be sued for support by the custodial father - assuming that eitehr one knew of the other.

As you said - the support if for the child.

This could even happen if the mother was still alive - her death has no bearing.

The only place your new little game has any bearing is on the ‘assumption of fatherhood’ - which is by default placed with the husband/SO if not challenged.

Risk of complications does not enter into the picture - at all.

15

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.

16

Yes

No, an unwanted kid is not a gift, its a curse/harm

17

I was talking about existence being a gift from the perspective of the child, though.

18

The biological father might be on the hook for his child, but not to children to whom he is neither biologically nor legally related.
Are you looking for some formula whereby a known biological father can evade child support? Dude, just donate to a sperm bank and you can be confident that your DNA is out there and you don’t have to pay for it.

19

Yes; correct! In turn, though, this might indicate that the causation principle is a poor argument to use to justify forcing male-bodied people to pay child support.

20

Please elaborate on this, though.