So, my sister married a guy who turned out to be a huge asshole, and she was pregnant before she realized the extent of his nastiness. She just had the baby, and isn’t sure whether to put his name on the birth certificate. She wants this verbally abusive, crazy man to be out of her life as much as possible. Is there any reason to put his name on the certificate, or not?
Um… Does she want him to pay child support? If yes, then she probably should.
Well, as someone who has been trying to re-create my family tree, I’ll say that blanks on birth certificates are highly annoying. And even if he’s a jerk, the child probably deserves to know his or her father’s name some day. It could even become critical information for some medical reason down the road. I’d lean toward keeping the name on there.
Sure, if you want to collect child support.
Ah, child support. Important. The kid will know his father, she isn’t trying to be a bitch about it, she’s just pretty emotional right now and very sick of dealing with his harassment, and I wasn’t sure what to tell her about it. Thanks!
This situation is disturbing but not necessarily in the way written. I don’t know either one of them but it sounds like she is planning to steal a child from someone she is still married to and effectively deny his existence. There are a whole bunch of potential problems with that starting with the fact that some states will automatically declare him the father anyway and it is possible he wants to be a part of the child’s life and you can’t just take kids away during divorce without the courts and both sides having a say in it. What if he requests a DNA test?
Why doesn’t she ask her divorce lawyer? It sounds like she has one already or needs one. Close to 100% of people that get divorced are psychotic, abusive assholes. Just ask the people they are divorcing while they are going through it if you want proof.
Yep, this. Good luck to your friend, Renee. Hope she can pick 'em better the next time around.
Agreed. There’s no reason other than spite to keep the name off. It won’t stop him from requesting a paternity test if he wants to be in the kid’s life. It won’t prevent him from seeing the kid. It won’t make things easy when the kid needs medical information on her paternal line. It will make it more expensive for her to prove paternity later on if she needs to. It won’t keep him out of her life, in other words, it can only make her and her child’s life more difficult.
She does have a lawyer, and she asked him and took notes, but her notes don’t make sense to her now, a few months later. (Her note says: “State him as father, but if he doesn’t sign it, he isn’t proving he is in fact the father.” We’re not sure what that means.) The lawyer is off work now, and she needed to know what to do by tomorrow. Dope to the rescue.
Shagnasty, if I was reading this, not knowing either party, I’d agree with you, but in this case, the guy really is nuts. He refuses to believe they’re getting divorced because his psychic says they’re going to have two more children together, before she stopped taking his calls he’d call her to scream abuse at her, to the point where she was afraid to talk to him because anything she said would set him off. He freaked out when she asked him to stop using the word “nigger,” saying she was being cowardly and judgmental. The child support thing might be a non-issue because one of the many reasons she finally filed for divorce was that he absolutely refused to attempt to get a job, even knowing his wife was pregnant (my sister has worked the entire pregnancy).
Despite all this, she has been as nice as possible to the ex while keeping herself and her week-old baby safe. She wants the baby to have as good as a relationship as possible with his father, she just doesn’t want him to have physical custody because he’s crazy and abusive. He’s coming for a supervised visit tomorrow. She really isn’t trying to hide the baby, I promise. She’s just scared and upset.
There’s nowhere for the father to sign on the birth certificate in most (all?) states. At a guess, I’d interpret the note to mean that if the dad refuses to sign an Affidavit of Paternity (not generally offered to married mothers, but it could be), then that doesn’t prove to a court that he is or is not the father. If he signs it, the court agrees he’s the father ('cause that’s what the affidavit says) but if he refuses, the court won’t accept that as evidence that he’s *not *the father. If he later denies being the father, they’ll order a DNA test, unless it’s one of those state in which the husband is legally presumed to be the father, genetically related or not.
Yeah, it’s lawyer territory. In the meantime, she can put him on the birth certificate, but he doesn’t sign it.
Thanks, WhyNot, that’s very helpful. She had the baby at home, and the midwife doesn’t seem to know much about the birth certificate process.
When the father gets straight and back in a civil state, he may very well be a real person, after mental help and/or medication. Her child is a baby now, but one day, I promise, that baby will want to know about the real father. I am so sorry she is in this predicament. Have pity on the ‘crazy father’ at arm’s length out of harm’s way.
Since the OP is basically seeking legal advice, this is better suited to IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
“When the father gets straight and back in a civil state”
Its a huge assumption that that will happen, and that all of his behaviour can be put down to mental health issues, let alone cured by medication.
Telling people to forgive someone who has made their life hell in these kinds of ways is generally uh, not helpful.
Otara
In my state, it works like this: She’s married, her husband is the legal father of the child. Assuming he is also the biological father of the child, he has a right to have his child bear his last name whether she likes it or not.
Further, if I was representing the husband in a contested divorce, when things turn ugly, I’m probably going to make a huge deal of her leaving the father’s name blank on her child’s birth certificate. That could be considered evidence of adultery.
I hope this isn’t too offensive, but why did she marry a guy like that in the first place?
Some kinds of crazy are genetic, so it’s best to keep all information available should the child need it for medical reasons down the road.
This, of course, assumes that dad is crazy crazy rather than just your average almostexhusband nutjob.
Yeah, the kid will have his last name, and he is the bio dad. There are no other men involved in this situation and probably won’t be for a long time.
Larry, it’s a long, sordid tale, but basically comes down to “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.” Definitely not the most well-thought-out decision she’s ever made, but she wasn’t going to be talked out of it.
The ex swears up and down that he’s “crazy crazy,” that his self-diagnosed ADHD makes him so mean, and that she shouldn’t blame him when he’s awful to her because he has a disease and can’t help it. Whatever. She’s still completely miserable around him, and he’s still abusive.
Slight hijack, but how does that “right” work, exactly? Why doesn’t the mother have the same right, even if the social convention is for the kid to take the father’s name?