mary
oh boy here we go

"He has all the rights of man of a marriage"

NO he does not. He is not married to the OW.

"Or for sake of logic......any man not married to the woman he bears a child with gets the rights of being a father just as the mother gets the rights of being a mother. "

NO because if that woman is married the law of presumption recognizes the BH as the dad. The law does not recognize the OM as the dad.

"A mm has a child with ow but because she is a intruder the judge should look at that mm in court and say "MM, you can not be father to this child because ow is a intruder to your marriage. Sorry dude........I can't let this ow intrude in your marriage."

Your statement would never happen because the OW is not married so there is no BH. So the law of presumption does not apply. Their is nothing to block the WH from being declared the dad. Except if our OW in this case was sleeping with more than one. Then it is DNA test time.

"NOW granted some MM's would start doing sumersalts in the court room, but for those MM's that want contact with ALL there children how is this any different than not allowing any OM being a father to HIS bio child that was proven with DNA?"

You are not making sense. The MM's paternity is recognized. There was nothing to prevent it from happening. Because the mom was single.

OM as Rhodes are out of luck because their AP was a WW. Whose husband has the law of presumption backing him up.

"And for your comment about ow keeping oc from married couple. Legaly that can't happen. No way unless mm is unfit. It is normally the mm who runs as fast as the wind if not faster from oc than ow keeping oc from mm. Of course there is conflixs at first as emotions are raw on all sides and all sides are normally acting on those emotions. ow thinks mm and bw are unresonable and bw and mm think the same of ow. When in fact it's normally a matter of settleing those emotions down and being adults. "

Pops raised that as a possible scenario.

I did not make that point. Sorry if I got you confused. Both the OW and the WH in pops scenario have paternal rights. Due to their being no BH. The OW was single.

The WHW has no paternal rights. The law of presumption does not work for BW's.

Last time I heard the only proof a woman needed for her paternal rights was to give birth.
Which the single OW did in pops scenario.

Pops wants to twist the law of presumption into something that it's not to make a point.
The law of presumption was I am sure there had to be many reasons for it being past. The one we have to agree on is that in the past male paternity could only be guessed.

For some reason determining female paternity was never a problem so the law of presumption never applied to them.

Comparing apples to watermelons.

pops

so you are tired of the law

there are 6 people involved

Rhodes

julia

BH

2 COM

OC

To make a moral decision you have to make a what's best for all decision. They can not be mutually exclusive.

Society for centuries has deem it best to protect the marriage and family first. It still is the best course of action to take today.

Society still holds affairs as wrong.

Rhodes went against society, against the norm, where it was clear understood by him that he would not be supported for his actions by society if things went bad for him.

Thus he has no claim against any one. He chose to have SF with a woman that was not free to be his wife. He chose to get a woman pregnant that the law would never recognize the child as his.

But you would not accept this before. Why do I repeat myself.

I hear the fat lady singing.

Wow,

This has certainly been an interesting discussion. I was struck by comments of bias and unfairness.

It seems to me that the issue of children even having them is one of bias and unfairness. With that thought in mind I thought I would remind people of a few things.

1. There was a time roughly a century ago, when the H almost universally got custody of the children. he could afford them, the W could not. My how things then turned. Now they are turning again, which to my mind is good.

2. The issue of a "woman's right to choose" is patently biased and unfair. Gestation takes 9 months, rearing a child takes a minimum of 18 years. Who gets the bill for that?? Yup Dad does. But he does not have any recourse with regard whether a child is born or not. There is no balance in the courts with regard to custody. Someone mentioned way back that men don't want custody, but the reality is even with the swing toward 50/50 custody a man has an uphill fight to have even 50/50. Full custody is rare although MEDC and at least one other poster have managed it.

3. There is the issue of the COM. If OM is brought back into the situation as he seeks and especially with his attitude, the COM will likely be children of divorce, with the BH getting much less than 50/50, the statistics reflect that reality. No one is worrying about the COM in this discussion, but if one is to worry about OC, the COM clearly have every right to be considered.

4. The WW was a particularly wicked woman and the OM is a a scumbag. How is that for direct and to the point? Frankly, if I were considering what was best for all of those kids, neither of them would be high on my list for parents. I apologize for those I offend, but WW played OM like a violin, and she played her H for a sap. OM shows no remorse for what he has done. But, the reality is the woman has a preferred position in these situations and those are the facts that prevail.

5. Yes, Mary the system is biased. Yes, Pop's the system is baised. But the reality is that the system does not reflect modern reality in my mind. It is estimate that 10% to 20% of children born are not children of the man that thinks he is the father. It has been proposed that all children be given DNA tests so that proper paternity and YES CHILD SUPPORT can be accorded the children. So far it has been shot down and the people who support shooting it down are women (NOW to be specific).

As someone pointed out in the old day all anyone knew for certain was the woman giving birth to the child was the mother. All else was up to the fates if it was to be determined. Today, we can know more, but with that knowledge comes major moral issues with regard to support, choices, rearing, etc. of children. Actually, now that I think of it we don't even know that the woman giving birth is the biological mother, with surragate motherhood on the rise.

So how does one sit in judgement of a case like this and make an all encompassing law??? It seems to me it must be based on old law, but with knowledge and acceptance of new technology and a weakening of the family unit as surpreme. (You don't know how much it pains me to say that last thing, but it is true.)

What I do know is the law as it is enforced in many states including mine CA is wacked out. A couple of years ago a 15 year old boy was ordered to pay child support to a 20-30 something year old teacher who became pregnant while she was having sex with the then 14 year old boy. She was found guilty of statatory (sp) rape, yet he had to pay. Does this make sense?

Nope, but how do you make sense of things if the ONLY view is what is best for the child in question and not the other children in the situation? I don't know.

I am sure I have not ended the debate and frankly I will read it with great interest because many good points pro and con are being brought up. It shows me how difficult it would be to make new laws that reflect the reality of today.

Have at it folks, I am finding this very interesting.

JL

Yes, a huge issue. I've been worrying about that, the interplay of raising the children if OM is allowed visitation with Anthony.

Awhile back (threadwise), I was going to suggest that OM could style his parenting like all 3 children are used to. By this I mean keep his discipline system similar, rewards and things like tooth fairy visits similar (not a quarter versus $100 per tooth), so as not to create jealousy or such blatant differences that it causes problems amongst the kids.

In my previous marriage, our stepkid situation sometimes created problems, with either the girls getting to do something special that my stepson wasn't invited to, or stepson's report card rewards from extended family that weakened what we as a stepfamily were trying to create and instill (big cash rewards for grades anyway, but particularly for C's and even D's wasn't my idea of a good thing). ANYway, to make it as painless as possible for kids, Rhoades oughta voluntarily style his parenting around what is already goin' on.

I didn't suggest that earlier. To some extent, that is unfair. To Rhoades' side of the family. And, as in divorce situations, we often discuss on the board how we sometimes have to resort to "Well, these are the house rules here, and we expect you to follow them while you are HERE...."

But it would certainly be important, I think, to safeguard uniformity. That's best for ALL the children.

It doesn't seem Rhoades would be willing to seriously consider that. Not that he'll get the chance to.

JL, you definitely laid the situation out. Oh my. And yep, you're right.

Hey there JL!

Hate to differ with you, but I have mentioned the com and said they need to be considered, at least twice, as well as others, like KaylaAndy, TheRoad, and maybe MrW.

In my own situation, in terms of the people involved-- our com's wellbeing carried the most amount of weight in our decisions.

roads my good man,,,,,,,

"""""""I hear the fat lady singing.

i hear her loud and clear and it is certainly nice to see you have finally accepted by point of view.

please show me where i said that the law does not need to be followed. you also accused me of picking and choosing the laws to follow. are you trying to tell me that you have never broken a speed limit? have you never driven 50 on a 40 mph street? have you not just picked which law you would follow because you were say late for the movie?

"""""""It still is the best course of action to take today.

OBJECTION, OBJECTION YOUR HONOR,,, purely speculation, councel is trying to lead the witness,,,,, sustained

although i will agree that protection of the marriage and family is best. it is still just my, your, jl, mary, etc opinion. and definately what you or i determine to be the family is not the same as what all deem the family unit. take a look at a middleeastern man with his herem or simply what is happening in texas. bigomy as we call it is still accepted in many parts of the world

i am actually quite disappointed in you. not only does your openning statement reflect back on the "law" issue but you see only 6 people affected by this. this does NOT simply affect 6 people. it effects hundreds or who knows how many because it is a ruling/"law" that will set precedence if future cases.

there have been many archaic laws on the books for many years. some have been amended and some stricken because they are meant to protect and serve EVERYONE EQUALLY. not just a select few.

someone already alluded to the fact that some states still have a "law" against any other sexual position then the missionary one. so if that was the case in your state, your w could never assume the dominate position. I actually like it when my w takes an active roll in our intimacy.

should you/i be put in jail? no the "law" should be stricken or amended to support our right to privacy.

not long ago in terms of society. if you had an exceptional sense of intuition you most likely would have been burned at the stake for being a witch. was it right? no. did it take away individual libertys? yes. fortunately is was stricken from all judicial papers that i know of. (not necessarily a whole bunch)

you say that because the child "was born of the marriage". ok let's disect that a bit. a marriage is when a man and a woman promise there undieing love to each other.

so, and i am assuming here, if, in the rhodes/ricketts situation. julia and rhodes told each other they love one another then they were in turn married at the time. i know, i know not in the eyes of the "law".

again i know i am stretching with that one

jl pointed out, and i agree it is very sad to see, that the traditional family unit is disappearing in this country. and very rapididly i might add. so maybe it is time to adapt our "laws" to reflect our social structure.

we all can agree that it takes a male AND a female to create a child. but why does it impose the fact that because a woman has a marriage certificate to another. she is deemed to have more rights to a child then the bio father. oh i forgot,, the "law".

so you are saying that because God gave a woman the ability to carry a child AND obtain a marriage certificate from someone she willingly goes out and betrays, her paternal rights are more important then a mans.

this may have been true 100 yrs ago before pampers and formula.

you see that although there are many people affected by this type of situation there are really only 3 people involved where PARENATL rights are concerned. the child, bio mother AND BIO FATHER.

and on the subject of abuse. since when are the facts and the truth abusive. so rhodes did put pictures on the internet. so what. did julia not pose for the pics? has he not been proven through dna testing to be the biologocal father of the child?

now i haven't seen the pictures but what is to say that he is not just a proud father showing off his son or a broken hearted lover showing that he and julia were once truly happy together.

and if pictures on the internet are abusive is it not abuse of her parents for a beautiful young woman to post nude photos of herself. when the parents are strickly against such actions.

no this one has not entered my life that i know of,,,,,,YET

you see old chap it seems that your whole arguement (not that it doesn't have some merit) is the "law" and the protection of the "family" unit (which by the way was comprimised by julia not rhodes, IMHO).

i think you have already been shown 2 things.

1- that "laws" need amending and removal in many cases.

2- that the family unit has many varying shapes and sizes.

so the challenge i am making of you is to give me something more.

if you are going to revert to the "product of a marriage". don't. i HAVE heard your arguement on that. i do get what you are saying but feel that position is simply clouding the issue. it is IMHO irrelevent to the true issue which is the basic paternal rights of a bio mother and bio father. no more, no less.

so if you have nothing else then....laa, lalala.

ok i'm the fat man singing

i actually thought you might go to the fact that in the last say 80 - 90 yrs the male has typically been the one to desert the family. thus leading the courts to swing in the sexually biased position of giving a woman more parental rights then a man. thus creating "laws" or rulings to support the ricketts position.

Lucks I actually agree with you on the rule thing.....and the part about one child getting this or that. I have run into that as the 4 year old does not notice really but the older ones do. Espeically being twins. Just the other day I bought the 4 year a couple of outfits and soon as the twins came home from there dads they notice cause the 4 year could not wait to show them. NOw they were not expenisve clothes and only a couple of outfits but they got mad at me.

I had to explain to them that throughout the school year because they are in school I buy them clothes every season. Oc gets some too but not like them and gets a lot of there handydowns.

I personally don't have to worry about toothfairy's as xh sends the child home with the tooth......etc. He really just does not participate in that stuff now, but a gf of mine had that same example as you said. She gave a 1.00 her xh gave him 50.00 (who give that much to a child for a tooth?)So I DO agree with you on that type of situations.

Children are more accepting if showed how to accept than adults are. The younger the better though.

I am in the oppisite of this stitch where the twins go see there dad every other weekend and the oc does not. I will be honest it took some adjustment on her end. He only (xh) started truely taking them every other weekend when he moved in with his gf so from birth to 2 1/2 the twins were always with her.

She would throw a tamtrum so loud and big I always dreeded the time he'd get them. But she has finally accepted it and she gets special time with me and we go and do at least one thing together park, movies or something special and she gets to talk to them daily when they are there and she is okay with it now. It was a very hard thing to go through but I had no choice in the matter. Therefore neither did she so I could either help her accept it and have a great attidute myself about it or dwel on her tantrums and not help her accept it but use it to keep her bitter over it.

hi autumn,,

i most definately agree with you. jl & lucks that the com should be considered

it is one of the most important issues a couple has to make in their decision on how they intend to rebuild their marriage thru these situations

i don't however think that judicial rulings or laws should be decided on that fact.

the reason is that there are so many different variables to that particular issue. take for example yours autumn, tigger, gemeni, K, dealean (sorry if i misspelled that), faith, if you can remember way back when i 1st came here there was a momof5 (i believe) and of course my own sit just to name a few that have all handled things differently

I agree with. Although the com have to be considered I do agree with the above statement. That is also why I explained how I feel the children are more accepting than adults in this thing. How we as adults set the tone for the kids. And that goes for the entire triangle.

ETA: I think it was JL that commented on how hard it is to even get 50/50 custody even today. I'm on the west coast and I know that the courts perfer it here. They want both parents equally involed and will give it more freely. NOW if my xh he on his on accord did not want it at first and when he went back for full custody when he moved in w/gf the judge said she was not changing a thing. I gave him the olive branch and gave it to him, and as soon as he lost in court he sees them about 10% of the month only.

Hey AD,

How are you doing? Sorry, I must have slid by your post, as I was trying to catch up.

You know what really annoys me, is that the W had the OM in the children's life, AND she had OM in the OC's life. She clearly had no remorse for what she was doing or had done, then she is (3 months later after both men have bonded with the baby) suddenly a devoted W.

What is clear to me neither she nor OM really have the children's best interests at heart. Oh, and since OM lives in Fla and they live in Ky, I guess that means that the baby gets shipped back and forth right?

Man what a mess. I will say if the baby is to be around messed up people it ought to be only ONE messed up person. But, then I think the wisdom of Soloman to sort this one out.

I'm look forward to more thoughts on this.

JL

Hey Pops,
In your above list the names mentioned did pretty much the same by leaving op out of the marriage. As much as possible for us dealing w/cs, we leave oc/ow out of our lives and for most who have, things improve rapidly.
Now I'm not sure about MO5, I think she divorced. She and her H included everyone and it was a problem.

Hey, how much is om still involved in Graces life?

Though the law in this case (Kentucky) seems unfair, it can save a lot of problems for remorseful op's who want to start over w/o interference. Also oc can look up bio when old enough I suppose if oc is told the truth. I don't really know what the heck is right, but this law seems to keep op at arms length. Wish we could have had that option .

Hi Autumn and JL~ You too Mary~

BTW Pops thanks for prayers.....

Earlier in the thread, Pops questioned exactly how the paternity presumption supports marriage.

I thought such purpose may need additional explanation.

The basic premise is that mothers are vested with parental rights and fathers obtain such rights...primarily through marriage.

Changes in family law granting unmarried fathers custodial rights of children diminish the value of marriage, at the outset, resulting in expotentially MORE out-of-wedlock fertility.

Wedlock fetility is the preferred method of procreation which should be supported and encouraged by the institutions of government. At the very least, government should not encourage out of wedlock fertility.

Husbands grant access to their economic resources and inheritance and, in return, get easier access to sex AND para-contractual rights to all of their wife's children, no matter how conceived.

Countries that have changed such basic marriage economics have done so at a huge cost. Take the examples of Germany and Iceland for instance:


Anyway, thought this article may provide some history of marriage as an exchange and further insight into the societal cost of changing family law in this country to accomodate interlopers.

http://www.olin.wustl.edu/fs/acadseminars/downloadPDF.cfm?recNum=41027.

Mr. Wondering

Very interesting, indeed.



Maybe we are thinking of 2 different cases, I thought this was in Oregon (?).
A minor point, but if you are sure it was CA, do you remember any details so I could look it up?

Thanks

This point of view makes sense to me now, but would not have made sense to me when I was younger and had far less respect for the institution of marriage as a stabilizing force in a society. (when I was a hippie)

Pep

pepper, i remember the case that jl was refering to as being in ca. that is not to say that a similar situation did not happen in oregon. the way things are in todays society it could have happened in all 50 for that matter.

in the ca case if memory serves me correctly (far and few times between) the teacher was actually place in jail and upon her release she reestablished the relationship with the boy, who was still under age if i am correct.

they ended up taking up residence together but i don't know if it lasted.

are we talking about Mary Kay Letourneau?

She was originally from CA, but committed child rape (as a teacher) in Washington State (not Oregon like I remembered)

google her and see if she is the sterling example of womanhood to whom you are referring

(ugh)

gem,,,,,,, om here is still involved as much as the courts have allowed. he has every wed evenning from 4 - 8 and every other weekend from fri 4 pm - sun 6 pm. he pays his cs thru the courts.it goes into fh's account and barely pays for graces daycare. he sets up his own parent conferences with the schools and we go to ours. we both attend her soccer games on occasion but it is usually the parent with the wekend visit time that takes her unless there is a special game. everyone keeps things busniess like respectful.

the problems we have had is that om exw was truly a [censored]. and i am not blaming her for being pissed at the situation. most bs's blame op for everything, i did also for awhile. but she was a real piece of work. still is even tho they are D.

also om kept taking fh back to court trying to lower his cs payment. it had fh so uptight that i finally told her she was free to offer him to sign his rights away and pay nothing if that is what he wanted. he denied and she told him that we never want to here him [censored] about money again. so far so good.

there is very little interaction with the 2 familys. she does most of the communication now and i try and stay out of it as much as possible. everytime she has any form of communication with his, which is mostly thru text mess, she tells me immediately. on her own not because i made it a stipulation. i am not worried about the A rekindling.

Glad to know all is pretty well with everything~ Awww Pops I'm happy for you and Fullhouse.
BTW, her name says it all because you guys sure have a 'full house'!
Glad I stopped by.
As far as om's former w, we all contribute to an affair in some way, guess they never worked things out. Just a guess, maybe she couldn't deal w/Grace, who knows?
Nice to hear from you again.

Minor t/j...hi gemini!

As a BW of a FWH with an OC, protecting my COM was my utmost concern. xOW was so intent on my H being a full time daddy to her OC that the decision to be NC was relatively easy. Some of you know the difficulties we went through. It would not be good for our M (and therefor COM) to have C. Maybe some day, FWH will want C. At that point we will re-evaluate the effect on the entire family before deciding. I used to be riddled with guilt that this OC did not have a father in his life. It is not my responsibility. His sperm and egg donors made decisions that will affect OC for his life. THEY are the ones that have to live with that.

pops, I am surprised with all the problems contact with OM has caused FH that you are not supportive of this law. Protecting marriage is protecting the FAMILY. I too don't see full consideration of the COM and the BS when the interloper is allowed to continue to interfere in the marriage. In my case, NC was the ONLY way to ensure xOW stopped interfering in our marriage.

Hey there Faith!
I agree w/the points you made (and others) about that new law.

We all mostly remember what H and I went through for years and that law wouldn't work for us. But if can help out anyones' marriage and they use that new law it will help 1/2 the couples to keep ow away.

Ow recently reopened cs and is in the process of wanting more $.
Although otherwise she hasn't done a thing since my FIL passed last year.
Lawyer said she won't give up till oc is 18.
I'll let Pops answer you, but I know they wanted cs because of Pops age and needing help to raise Grace.
TTYL all.