...But for Susan, it turned out, everything wasn’t fine. While Jesus and the church were pulling her in one direction, the judicial system had made an unwelcome appearance and was pulling her in another. The entire time Susan was in prison, the state of Pennsylvania was running a tab on all the welfare dollars her mother received in her children’s names. Consequently, per state law, Susan was held responsible for the total amount upon her release, and soon the welfare department came calling to get its money back.

In our sessions, Susan showed me a raft of increasingly threatening official letters with eye-popping dollar figures that had her practically hyperventilating. The state wanted in excess of $25,000, and wanted it now.

A hearing was scheduled at the Bucks County Courthouse, where Susan was asked to provide documents proving that she had a job and could start paying her child support debt or face returning to jail in contempt of a court order. Obviously, on her janitor’s survival wages Susan had absolutely no capacity to both pay the state and keep a roof over her head. This Sophie's choice is a common dilemma for tens of thousands of single mothers returning to the community from prison who owe the state for the dollars their children depended on in their mother’s absence. ...

Susan protested the high amount of the monthly support payment, explaining that if she paid the debt she couldn’t afford a place to live. I will never forget how painful it was, watching this woman, who had never in her life caught a single break, have to stand before the American justice system and nearly beg for mercy. But for this black woman in this white judge's courtroom there was no mercy to be had. Her criminal record of violent crime, her drug addiction, her prostitution—all of her vices outweighed the spiritual transformation and personal rehabilitation she had experienced in prison, not to mention her clean-as-a-whistle record in her new life.

The judge merely mocked her, saying, “You’ve got a place to live now: Bucks County Correctional Facility for 90 days.” The public defender tried to interject but the judge was already calling for the next case.

Labels: child support, children, class, culture, mental health, motherhood, parenting, poverty, race, religion

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After a couple years of sending my girlfriend a clear message of, "We're never getting married," I proposed. There are reasons it took me so long to come around, but none of them fell into those magazine/sitcom stereotypes (which can be summed up as, "He's having too much fun screwing around and doesn't want to commit").

In fact, I'm pretty sure that the people who write sitcoms and jewelry commercials and movies about bachelor parties don't have any goddamned idea how actual human relationships work. So for the women who have been conditioned to believe that we men are afraid of commitment because we don't want to give up our seat on the Saturday Night [expletive] Train, allow me to give you the real reasons marriage scares guys.

#5. We're Flooded with Anti-Marriage Messages

Labels: child support, children, cohabitation, culture, custody, divorce, Marriage, men, weddings, weddings vs. marriage

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A man who had his sperm frozen in case he became infertile was astonished to learn that his ex-wife had tricked an IVF clinic into twice making her pregnant.

He then had to pay £100,000 towards the upbringing of the son and daughter he had known nothing about.

The father, a 57-year-old retired haulier, is now demanding a change in the law to ensure no other parents go through his torment.

The astonishing story begins in 1999 when the man was about to have drug treatment for crippling arthritis.

He stored sperm at the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge to ensure that he and his wife, who married in 1979, could have a child if the treatment left him infertile.

In June 2000 the couple decided to divorce and weeks later she visited the clinic and forged his signature, allowing doctors to create embryos from his frozen sperm and her egg.

She gave birth to a girl in June 2001, claiming it was the result of a one-night stand, and a boy in September 2003.

When the boy needed hospital treatment for a hole in the heart, his mother’s sister phoned the haulier to reveal that both children were his.

Labels: child support, children, divorce, Fathers, IVF, United Kingdom

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Biology is neither necessary nor sufficient to create a legal parent. A new Delaware Supreme Court case, Adams-Hall v. Adams, illustrates this point in an unusual context and gives food for lots of thought.

Christine Adams-Hall and Robert Adams were in a sexual relationship. In November 2007, Christine told Robert she was pregnant with his child. She asked him for a semen sample, alleging that she wanted to have it tested to see if Robert was a carrier of cystic fibrosis. She asked for another sample in February 2008, telling Robert there had been blood in the first sample. Later, Robert contacted Christine's obstetrician, who told him that an intra-uterine insemination procedure had been successfully used in February 2008 to produce Christine's pregnancy.

When the baby was born, Robert filed a petition to determine parentage, and the trial judge ruled he was not a legal parent because he had not signed a written consent to Christine's insemination with his semen, per the Delaware parentage statute that says a man who does consent to a woman's insemination in writing, with the intent to be a parent, is a parent. The trial judge believed Robert's testimony that his sexual relationship with Christine ended in January 2008 (she claimed it was April).

At first read, this opinion makes complete sense. Christine deceived Robert into providing a semen sample for her insemination and so he "shouldn't" have a legal obligation to a child he did nothing to conceive. But remember that he gave the first sample in November 2007. Had pregnancy resulted then, he would certainly have been considered the father, as he admitted having a sexual relationship with Christine until January 2008. No court would have parsed which method of conception actual created the pregnancy. Plus, the law books are filled with cases in which men having sexual intercourse with women claiming to be infertile or on the pill have been required to support children born to those women when it turns out the woman was deliberating lying in an attempt to conceive a child, knowing the man would not agree.

The theory in those deception cases is that the child shouldn't suffer, translated into the child should have access to the father's economic resources. Well that theory applies equally well to the child Christine bore. ...

I agree with the court's ruling. But I believe a woman should have to option to conceive a child with no legal father, even by sexual intercourse. It's just that the courts don't usually buy that.

Labels: child support, children, Fathers, parenting

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Half of all U.S. children won't live with their father for part of their childhood. But just because "non-resident" dads don't live with their kids doesn't mean they're not involved with them.

"There are fathers that are very involved. There are some that are not. We have this image of the non-resident dad, and for some, that's the deadbeat dad," says Valarie King, a sociologist and demographer at Pennsylvania State University who just completed work on a five-year grant studying non-resident fathers.

Decades ago, non-resident fathers were largely divorced, but King and other researchers say many non-resident dads today were in a non-marital relationship that didn't last. Divorced fathers have been shown to be more involved, on average, than those who were never married to the child's mother, King says.

Such research findings (some yet unpublished) — along with changing attitudes and custody laws — are creating a new picture of today's non-resident dads.

"People don't realize how much things have changed, but if we look at the numbers, we see big increases in fathers' contact with children and big increases in fathers' payment of child support," says Paul Amato, also a Penn State sociologist and demographer.

And, just as fathers in two-parent families are more involved than a generation ago, "we're seeing a parallel trend among non-resident fathers," he says. ...

Cowan says the "best predictor of whether a father is going to be involved with his kids is his relationship with the mom. "They don't have to love each other or like each other, but they do need to co-parent and collaborate."

Others agree; the more time non-resident fathers spend with their kids, the better the relationship between the parents, finds a study co-authored by Marcia Carlson, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was presented to the Population Association of America in April.

Labels: child support, culture, divorce, Fathers, men, parenting

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It was in July 2007 when Mike L. asked the Pennsylvania courts to declare that he was no longer the father of his daughter. For four years, Mike had known that the girl he had rocked to sleep and danced with across the living-room floor was not, as they say, "his." The revelation from a DNA test was devastating and prompted him to leave his wife -- but he had not renounced their child. He continued to feel that in all the ways that mattered, she was still his daughter, and he faithfully paid her child support. It was only when he learned that his ex-wife was about to marry the man who she said actually was the girl's biological father that Mike flipped. Supporting another man's child suddenly became unbearable.

Two years after filing the suit that sought to end his paternal rights, Mike is still irate about the fix he's in. "I pay child support to a biologically intact family," Mike told me, his voice cracking with incredulity. "A father and mother, married, who live with their own child. And I pay support for that child. How ridiculous is that?"

Yet despite his indignation -- and despite his court filings seeking to end his obligations as a father -- Mike loves his daughter. Every other weekend, the 11-year-old girl, L., lives in Mike's house in a quiet suburban neighborhood in Western Pennsylvania. Her bedroom there is decorated to reflect her current passion: there's a soccer bedspread, soccer curtains and a soccer-ball night light. On her bed is an Everybody Loves Me pillow covered with transparent sleeves filled with photos of her and Mike, the man she calls "Daddy," canoeing, fishing and sledding together. ...

Mike's conundrum is increasingly playing out in courts across the country, a result of political, social and technological shifts. Stricter federal rules have pressed states to chase down fathers and hold them responsible for children born outside of marriage, a category that includes 40 percent of all births. At the same time, DNA tests have become easier, cheaper and more reliable. Swiping a few cheek cells and paying a couple hundred dollars can answer the question that has plagued men since the dawn of time: Am I really the father?

Labels: adultery, child support, Fathers

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