The husband can have paternity challenged, you lose your legal right to visitation and custody though so many men would shy away from doing so just to avoid child support.
DNA has only played a role in paternal responsibility in recent years. It plays such a huge role because it’s such a reliable method of determining who a parent is. I will address why one of them must be responsible below.
The long and the short of it is that unwanted children are a burden on society. Might as well shift the responsibility to the people who made the child.
Visitation? I think you’re talking about divorced couples.
What would the purpose of legally challenging the paternity of a child of a woman you were still married to, legally your assets and debts are shared.
I was just verifying that you were talking about a divorced couple, since you were replying to someone who was talking about married couples.
And if you could challenge paternity, while married, to move the burden onto the other man, then the fact that your assets are shared with your wife is inconsequential. The other man would be paying for that child.
One single person can’t independently have a child. Both parents decided to have the child when they committed the act that produced the child. The fact that the father didn’t anticipate that that would be the result of his action doesn’t change the fact that it still resulted from his action. That makes him partly responsible.
Merely having sex is not the same as deciding to have a child. People have sex for reasons that go beyond biological reproduction.
True, I am thinking of the practical bit of it though, you would still lose your legal right to custody so if your wife died and or left you would have no legal claim to the child unless you officially adopted them. Adoption would remove the financial responsibly of the biological parent removing any advantage gained by the original legal challenge.
Also the biological father could file for custody which is a huge risk assuming you love and want to raise a child.
There is a risk sex will produce a child, by having sex you are accepting that risk.
The child is the one with no choice in the matter, the courts are interested in the child.
This is why any “agreement” you have with a partner is moot, the responsibility is to the child and they were not party to your umm…party.
By having sex, are you really accepting that risk though? Can you not put the baby up for adoption, or have an abortion?
Also is the responsibility for that risk equally shared between men and women? I don’t believe it is. It would seem that the woman has a greater responsibility for pregnancy-prevention than the man.
How is this relevant? Are you suggesting that single-parenthood be illegal, for example?
Like I said, you could put the baby up for adoption or have an abortion, and so that responsibility is rather “flexible”, and not really binding.
I made no claims about the choice to abort, because it is 100% irrelevant.
I am only talking about responsibility to a born child, any agreement you have with your partner is moot, the child was not party to that agreement.
You accept the risk when you have sex, you accept the financial risk of a crash when you get in your car and drive too.
If you rear end someone you can’t say “well I didn’t mean to crash and so I’m not paying a dime”
I’ll ignore your silly strawman arguments.
So you’re suggesting that after a child is born, both parents should be held legally and financially responsible?
Interesting. But I’m still a little confused though.
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If both parents should be legally and financially responsible, why do we allow adoptions and single-parenthood? Why are there exemptions to the responsibility?
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Do you believe that the man and the woman are equally responsible for the child that they brought into the world (even if it was unplanned)?
Get yourself fixed so you can’t impregnate anyone. It’s the only way to be sure.
FWIW, I don’t approve of women getting pregnant under false pretenses, but it’s the child that matters in the end.
Just because a single parent fails to peruse financial support from the other parent does not mean there is not the right, nor does it mean I want to “outlaw single parents” that is a strawman, go look it up.
If that single parent uses states services the state will often step up and peruse financial support. The child typically does not exercise this right by them self.
Both parents are legally obligated to provide financial support as the question was originally framed, the right of support is a right of the child, the individual parents are irrelevant outside of the reality that if separated one of the natural parents typically has custody.
With exception for straw-man arguments this discussion has become circular, I will bow out now.
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to use a strawman argument, I’m just trying to understand your logic and reasoning.
Are you implying that a child has a *right *to support from both parents? If so, then why doesn’t the state make it mandatory and enforce those rights on behalf of the child?
Currently, it seems to be the right of the single parent to pursue child support and not the right of the child necessarily. But that doesn’t really support your argument… and that’s why I brought it up.
But it’s still fully, and effectively, under the single-parent’s control as to whether the 2nd parent is coerced into paying child support.
This is something I don’t really understand.
If neither parent wants responsibility, then the state will take the child away (if the woman chose not to have an abortion, and the child is already born). Yet if ONE of the parents wants responsibility, the state then forces the SECOND parent to also have financial responsibility (often against their will). This is where I fail to see the reasoning behind the way things work.
It just seems very logically inconsistent, and hence my questioning.
Let me pose this question to the OP.
Peter is having unprotected sex with Mary. Paul is having unprotected sex with Alice.
Mary gets pregnant. Peter is the father.
Would you argue that Paul is partly responsible for Mary’s child? Paul never had sex with Mary but he was having unprotected sex so theoretically he could have caused a pregnancy.
Is this one of those adaptive questions, such as formulated by the GREs, GMATs, etc? If so then the SD is sliding back on that whole fighting ignorance mandate…
In US law, the child has the right to support from his parents until he turns 18 or emancipates himself. That right is the child’s, not the custodial parent. For example, South Dakota law says:
"The parents of a child are jointly and severally obligated for the necessary maintenance, education, and support of the child in accordance with their respective means. "
And as the FAQ on the Texas Attorney General’s Child Support and custody webpage says:
They do. That is the law in all fifty states.
They do.
No, it is the OBLIGATION of the custodial parent – IF the other parent does not voluntarily support the child – to pursue that support ON BEHALF of the child.
No, if the custodial parent fails to seek support, and the child suffers for it, the state can, and will, remove that child from the parent’s custody. Absent such dire straits, however, the state does not intervene in a parent’s choices about how to bring up a child.
Almost obstinately so.
It is impossible to coerce people into acting responsibly. Removing the child is the best option when neither parent will do so. As long as one parent is willing to do the work, then the state has ample means of making the other parent pay. That is the least a parent owes a child, and it’s the most the state can do.
It’s perfectly logical. Children have rights, parents have rights, and adults have rights separate from the role of parent. All of these rights must be balanced when the state acts. Such actions are undertaken by human beings who get emotional, make mistakes, and have prejudices, but the theory is simple and sound.