by that logic, a woman impregnated by rape would be obligated to carry and deliver the child. That judge is (IMO) a fucking lunatic.
(IANAD) Generally, sperm has to be properly stored to be usable. The maid won’t have much luck, since sperm that dries out too much is dead. It’s not a matter of just add water. The only viable “trick” so to speak, would be a used condom or similar receptacle where evaporation was limited.
Of course, cases like this are few and far between, so what the judge might decide in any such case is wide open to discussion. (well, here we are…) The oral-to-baby case above sounds like there were some interesting dynamics in the relationship, I would guess the suit for support was part of a get-even strategy against a guy finally trying to run away from a whacko and a mistake.
Tricking some guy into getting her pregnant is a common story. Of course, only 1 person knows the whole truth, and unless she blurts it out in an argument (or on YouTube?) you’ll never be sure. Considering that for many people it’s hard enough to get pregnant when you try, it would be a long shot but not impossible to find misplaced sperm and succeed with it.
By which logic? Mine or the one in the linked thread? I don’t see how my hypothetical judge has anything to do with stopping a rape victim from aborting the fetus. As for the judge in the linked thread, I really didn’t read it that closely, but I didn’t see where the judge was forcing a rape victim to carry a baby to term.
In some states it would depend on her marital status; off the top of my head I can think of at least 2 states where the child of a married couple automatically has the husband as Father on the birth certificate until someone else comes forward desiring to prove paternity. AFAIK she couldn’t force the sperm donor to file a claim.
But otherwise, I don’t see how he could avoid being liable for support if his sperm wasn’t stolen from the custody of a medical setting.
My sister the lesbian’s partner got pregnant via a sperm bank. The contract the donors have to sign is huge, basically trying to make sure the donor has no legal rights to any child conceived with his donated sperm. Even so, there have been some court cases by donors trying to gain access to their child.
If a woman gets pregnant via rape and has a child, the guy can insist on DNA testing and, if he’s the father, can sue for paternal rights.
Undoubtedly. Our legal system is heavily based on (and I’m sure there’s some fancy Latin term for it) “Making It Up As We Go.”
Absent strong precedents, it would be up to the court system to sort this out, so I don’t think there can be any definitive answer until a case like the one in the OP were to actually come to trial. (And I can’t imagine that’s very likely.)
IMO, I’d argue that the unwilling sperm donor should not be held liable for support. While pregnancy is a reasonably foreseeable outcome of consensual sexual activity (even with precautions), it is not a reasonably foreseeable outcome of masturbating alone in one’s dorm room.
Mere seconds before opening this thread I was reading about “Wierd things famous people insure,” on msn.com.
Dolly Parton’s tits, Gene Simmons tongue, AND David Lee Roth’s sperm. According to the short blurb it was to protect himself from just this sort of thing.
Now, who’s OP is wacky and far out?
Here’s a staff report on sperm bank daddies being made to pay up: Can a sperm donor be forced to pay child support? - The Straight Dope
EDIT TO ADD: Link has a cite for Der Trihs claim of statutory rape dad being made to pay.
In our legal system, Dad’s = ATMs and the courts are going to make him pay up no matter what.
Worse than that - in some states (California?) even a DNA test won’t change legal paternity. This is apparently based on pre-DNA law, where the courts did not want to be re-deciding parental status and rights over and over. IIRC, once you have parental responsibility, after 2 years unchallenged the court will not let you change it, even with new incontrovertible evidence. The logic is that a child forms a parental bond, biological or not. A parent cannot arbitrarily change this. Also, I read of one case where the new girlfriend tossed the papers in the garbage and nevertold the guy. Even though he was nowhere near the ex-gf at conception time, the case was never heard, he lost by default. He knew nothing about this; when they collection agency caught up wiht him several years later ('surprise, you’re a dad, a deadbeat and you owe $XX,XXX"), even a DNA test could not change that.
and here I was thinking that the stolen condoms bit is the lowest point of open, blatant injustice that the family “law” system can get to. So, yeah, I was wrong.
So what should be a proper response to such threats for all those broke-up-with-gf men who may be at risk of such treatment? Is there some publicly available database of paternity claims that they could monitor in order to pounce on any BS claim as soon as it comes up?
Sure: State Ex Rel. Hermesmann v. Seyer, 847 P. 2d 1273 (Kan. 1993):
I don’t think it’s that so much as it is the worry that if you say “You have to pay for the children you sire, unless the sperm was stolen” will give rise to every putative father asserting just that. And courts don’t want to be in the business of doing analyses of just exactly where the sperm was deposited. Not because they are being delicate, but because it’s likely to be a pretty difficult enterprise with very little in the way of evidence save the conflicting account of the parents.
Sometimes we have to decide cases where that is the only available evidence. In this instance, however, our courts (and our legislatures, by their inaction) have decided that the risks of requiring (the probably very few, but obviously not zero) sperm theft victims to pay child support does not outweigh complicating the far greater number of paternity suits where this issue is not present but where the defense will nevertheless be raised.
How is it that single women are legally allowed access to artificial insemination? Given that the courts have determined that the magic number of people that should financially support a child is 2 and that child support is a right of the child and not the parent, isn’t the single mother abdicating a right that isn’t hers?
What if the sperm belonged to a man who had excellent traits (athletic, handsome, smart, accomplished musician, etc.) or was just plain rich/powerful/famous…and the woman was stalkerish? She might see that as an in to the man’s life.
Wasn’t there a movie based on this premise?
Actually, one point in the article was that the Family Services departement responsible for ensuring papers were served was being deliberately lax. Once the papers were allegedly served, the “father” was a no-show, and 2 years had elapsed it was too late for anything. The new gf tossing the served papers in the trash was the kindest bit - at least the papers went to the right address. The department would routinely send to old drivers license addresses, college dorms, and where the baby-mama told them to send. If the letter ended up in the trash - well, they went to court, swore the papers had been served to the best of their knowledge, and that was that.
Whereas in Canada, even being common-law for 6 months might earn you a 18-plus years of child support. The courts say that acting like a father - helping raise the kid, signing school permission slips, etc. - can mean you have a parental replationship, adopted or not, married or not. You are now on the hook for child support if you break up. And… the province of Quebec touts its wonderful new child-friendly policy, changing the law a few years ago. Unlike the rest of Canada, in Quebec if you have additional children with other (non)spouse(s) your payments to the first child’s mother will go down; whereas in the rest of Canada, having more children does not mean you pay less to the mother of the first claimant.
The problem with the underage father is that the law is wrtten as it is written. Judges will often jump through legal hoops to twist the law to the result they want, or they feel is right. (see States, United, Supreme Court of…) but when the law is pretty clear and unambiguously written, especially the lower court justices cannot just pull exceptions out of their headgear or rear.
md2000, the issue you bring up with boyfriends of women with children in Canada is ugly but not, err, abhorrent. If you see the child there and don’t flee into the night “don’t say you haven’t been warned”.
But the notification bit is much worse - here the government imposes the time-limited burden of contesting paternity but makes it unclear how to handle this burden in a number of fairly common cases. So what are men supposed to do? Is there an office where you or your representative can go to ask “have ladies XGF1, XGF2 and XGF3 claimed me as the alleged father of a child over the past 2 months?”
Hand over money. Whether you’ve been informed or not, or are actually the father or not, as a man it is your function to hand over money to women. You’re an ATM with legs, nothing more.
Interesting, can this apply even if the mother is already getting child support from another man for the child? :eek: It would be extremely fucked up (even more so than American CS laws) if a woman could force mulitple men to pay her child support for the same child? Also, I assume the same is true if the genders are reversed. A single father with sole custody can breakup with his live-in girlfriend ans sue her for child support based on the fact that he let her pick-up the kid from school and do other “parentaly” stuff.
On skimming the thread, the famous Boris Becker doesn’t seem to have been mentioned yet.
Basically, he was already known as rich* ex-tennis star and also married with a wife and some normal kids, when he had an encounter with an attractive woman in an UK hotel and spend some 5 min. in the next broom closet, getting oral sex. The woman managed to keep some sperm from this encounter, impregnated herself and after the birth of the child sued Becker for child support.
The court basically decided that “It’s genetically your child, how it was conceived doesn’t matter, so pay up”. That the woman was obviously a gold digger out for his money (can’t have been his looks or IQ), that the whole media scandal will harm the child later on (imagine reading in the newspapers that the sole reason you were conceived was to get money from a celebrity! That must suck) - didn’t matter as much as the DNA. (And yes, I wish the laws would be updated to change that.
- I don’t know whether he’s still as rich as people believe him to be - he earned some money with winning tournaments and sponsors, but IIRC, he (like many other child stars and sports stars) found out that his manager (his father, I think) had invested the money badly, illegally, lost some money and he owed a huge tax debt from undeclared money. So maybe he doesn’t have much left.
I want to point out that if a woman is raped and bears the child, she is also responsible for the child’s support. It’s true that she has the right to abort, but once the child exists, it is entitled to support from both its parents: if a woman were to go to a court and say “I really wanted an abortion but my asshole boyfriend kept me locked in a closet the whole nine months”, that would not in any way diminish her responsibilities to the child.