Judge says man must pay $30K in child support for kid who is

[Alyrium Denryle]

Do you have any idea how much it costs to raise a kid?

So? If I don't want a child and have done my share of the deal not to get it but it still happens because she failed at her part or indeed wanted it against my wishes that should be taken into account before turning me into a wage slave for her or that child.

Sorry, but once it is born, that child exists independently of anything you or its mother did. It did not ask to be brought into this world, and you helped. Your wishes be damned, you selfish sack of shit.

Also: If you had actually done everything in your ability to prevent pregnancy, it is highly unlikely that pregnancy would have occurred. Moreover, the idea that women become wealthy from child support, or get pregnant so as to become wealthy, completely fucking ridiculous.

[Purple]

Sorry, but once it is born, that child exists independently of anything you or its mother did. It did not ask to be brought into this world, and you helped. Your wishes be damned, you selfish sack of shit.

So I don't get to choose if I want it to be born, but I get to pay for it? That sounds fair. NOT

Also: If you had actually done everything in your ability to prevent pregnancy, it is highly unlikely that pregnancy would have occurred.

Accidents happen.

Moreover, the idea that women become wealthy from child support, or get pregnant so as to become wealthy, completely fucking ridiculous.

Who cares about getting wealthy? If it screws me over it screws me over.

[Flagg]

Sorry, but once it is born, that child exists independently of anything you or its mother did. It did not ask to be brought into this world, and you helped. Your wishes be damned, you selfish sack of shit.

So I don't get to choose if I want it to be born, but I get to pay for it? That sounds fair. NOT

Also: If you had actually done everything in your ability to prevent pregnancy, it is highly unlikely that pregnancy would have occurred.

Accidents happen.

Moreover, the idea that women become wealthy from child support, or get pregnant so as to become wealthy, completely fucking ridiculous.

Who cares about getting wealthy? If it screws me over it screws me over.

You are a stupid selfish fuck who should be castrated immediately. I don't give a fuck if it "screws you over". I give a fuck about the welfare of the child. The one you (hypothetically, I believe the first and last vagina you'll ever touch is your mothers) brought into the world. It has needs that must be met and you get to pay a lot less than half of them the vast majority of the time.

[Darth Holbytlan]

So I don't get to choose if I want it to be born, but I get to pay for it? That sounds fair. NOT

A. Yes, you do get to choose if it is born. You choose when you choose to have sex with the future mother. Yes, you can use protection to minimize the risk if you do so, but guess what: You are have responsibility for accidents in which you played a role.

B. Both you and the mother are equally responsible for the child. That's perfectly fair.

C. The point of child support is to benefit the child, not the parent. The main issue is not fairness to the parents, but fairness to the child.

You also seem to be implying something about fathers being able to avoid child support because mothers have the option of an abortion. I suggest reading this older thread on the subject before trying to hash it out again in this thread.

[Broomstick]

And does your system not disproportionately reward women who do the same? Go on an one night stand, get pregnant, sue the guy for money. Instant wealth. I am not saying many women would do this. But the fact that I can construct such a scenario shows that the system is flawed.

Having actually pursued a lawsuit under the US system, "instant" is not the word I'd use. These cases can drag on for years. I don't doubt women have tried it, but there's no guarantee they'll win anything for themselves. There might be an agreement to support the kid at a boarding school, for example, in which case payments might go to the boarding agency. Or a trust fund to pay for schooling. If you're talking about someone with actual wealth there are a number of ways to ensure the money is going to the kid and not the mother.

Golddiggers of that sort seem more to pursue alimony (which goes directly to the ex) more than child support.

[Broomstick]

Sorry, but once it is born, that child exists independently of anything you or its mother did. It did not ask to be brought into this world, and you helped. Your wishes be damned, you selfish sack of shit.

So I don't get to choose if I want it to be born, but I get to pay for it? That sounds fair. NOT

You get to choose whether or not to stick your penis in a vagina, presumably with the full knowledge that no contraceptive is 100% reliable. If you are that determined not to reproduce then don't have any form of sex that might even remotely result in pregnancy. If you choose to have sex that might, possibly, by some fluke result in pregnancy then accept there is a non-zero risk of a child occurring.

No, once it's conceived you don't get to make the born/not born decision. You aren't the person getting pregnant. I'm sorry biology is unfair that way, it's not the way I would have designed things, but then I wasn't present in the design phase.

Also: If you had actually done everything in your ability to prevent pregnancy, it is highly unlikely that pregnancy would have occurred.

Accidents happen.

Yes. And if you're responsible for an accident then you can be held responsible for the results.

Moreover, the idea that women become wealthy from child support, or get pregnant so as to become wealthy, completely fucking ridiculous.

Who cares about getting wealthy? If it screws me over it screws me over.

Then don't screw women. End of problem.

[Simon_Jester]

And does your system not disproportionately reward women who do the same? Go on an one night stand, get pregnant, sue the guy for money. Instant wealth. I am not saying many women would do this. But the fact that I can construct such a scenario shows that the system is flawed.

The 'wealth' from the child support money is totally swallowed up by the cost of raising the child; that is the point of having child support in the first place, you smug ignorant horrible little man!

[The Vortex Empire]

If you don't want to be responsible for a child you had a part in creating, either don't have sex, get a vasectomy, or in the future take that male birth control pill if it ends up being safe and effective. Problem solved.

That or get the government to implement a sufficient guaranteed basic income system with increased payouts for children, disabilities, etc., but I don't see the US having anything like that in the foreseeable future.

[LaCroix]

If you don't want to be responsible for a child you had a part in creating, either don't have sex, get a vasectomy, or in the future take that male birth control pill if it ends up being safe and effective. Problem solved.

Seconded.

That or get the government to implement a sufficient guaranteed basic income system with increased payouts for children, disabilities, etc., but I don't see the US having anything like that in the foreseeable future.

And seconded. And true - even here in socialist paradise europe, a basic income system is brought up, occasionally, before getting roasted on the spit... If we can't bring ourselves to do that, the devil will be in need of skates before it happens overseas.

[madd0ct0r]

Just to note Alaska does have a basic income, and is one of the few places in the world to do so. carry on.

[Steve]

Alaska has special circumstances given how expensive it is to live there and the oil revenues the State gets to pull in to fund the program.

[Elheru Aran]

IIRC, a number of Native reservations in the US and Canada (I could be wrong on this, hence the IIRC) have a similar setup with the guaranteed minimum income, due to longtime unemployment issues.

[LaCroix]

I'll send a nice pair down, then...

[Solauren]

Who cares about getting wealthy? If it screws me over it screws me over.

Perhaps you have not heard of this wonderful, widely available option to human males that wish to have irresponsible sexual relations with multiple female partners and not have children?

It's call a Vasectomy.

From Wikipedia:

During the procedure, the male vasa deferentia are severed and then tied/sealed in a manner so as to prevent sperm from entering into the seminal stream (ejaculate) and thereby prevent fertilization from occurring. Vasectomies are usually performed in a physician's office, medical clinic, or, when performed on an animal, in a veterinary clinic— hospitalization is not normally required as the procedure is not complicated, the incisions small, and the necessary equipment routine.

There are several methods by which a surgeon might complete a vasectomy procedure, all of which occlude (i.e. "seal") at least one side of each vas deferens. To help reduce anxiety and increase patient comfort, men who have an aversion to needles may consider a "no-needle" application of anesthesia while the "no-scalpel" or "open-ended" techniques help to speed-up recovery times and increase the chance of healthy recovery.

Due to the simplicity of the surgery, a vasectomy usually takes less than 30 minutes to complete. After a short recovery at the doctor's office (usually less than an hour), the patient is sent home to rest. Because the procedure is minimally invasive, many vasectomy patients find that they can resume their typical sexual behavior within a week, and do so with little or no discomfort.

You don't want kids? Either make it so you can't have them, or don't have sex. Simple as that.


Now, to the main article.

The dude claimed the kid on a government form as his child. Therefore, he's the father. You don't like it? Next time don't help someone attempt to defraud the system.

[Tsyroc]

You don't want kids? Either make it so you can't have them, or don't have sex. Simple as that.


Now, to the main article.

The dude claimed the kid on a government form as his child. Therefore, he's the father. You don't like it? Next time don't help someone attempt to defraud the system.

A vasectomy is not 100% either. The little wigglers have been known to travel down scar tissue and off to do what they are intended to do. It's still nearly 100% effective but if you don't want to have kids the best bet is to not have sex with fertile women.

I was thinking the guy got royally screwed to no end until you mentioned that he claimed the kid on a government form. So either he thought the kid was his or knew the kid wasn't his but was willing to lie to the government about it. If it's the later, I wonder what the consequences of lying to the government are? If someone got money because of it I bet you he could be fined and required to repay the money with interest, maybe some prison time. How's that $30,000 sounding now?

[Terralthra]

See, the thing is, there is a fundamental unfairness when it comes to pregnancy and parental support. When anti-abortion people say to women who seek an abortion, "You shouldn't have had sex if you didn't want to get pregnant," I don't know many people other than religious fundamentalists and evangelists who would accept that as a valid argument. In the modern world, there are other reasons to have sex - intimacy, emotional connection, physical pleasure - and few would pretend otherwise.

However, when it's a man saying "I wanted intimacy and physical pleasure, not a kid, but here I am on the hook for child support", we're all "SHOULDN'T HAVE GOTTEN YOUR PENIS INVOLVED THEN LOL", when women do in fact have exactly the option to go forward with a pregnancy/child or not and I doubt few people here would deny it to them.

Now, that being said, the argument runs immediately into problems because, as people have pointed out, there is another human involved, who deserves a stable childhood environment, which can take more resources than a single mother can provide. That doesn't mean there isn't a fundamental unfairness there, and denying the unfairness by saying "SHOULDN'T HAVE GOTTEN YOUR PENIS INVOLVED LOL" is facile sophistry.

Respond with the real concerns - a child needing support to live. Not bullshit you'd never say to a woman who wants an abortion.

[Simon_Jester]

I'd argue that it has to do with the biology- women are the ones who have to physically bear the children and who are, most of the time, going to do most of the work raising them. If they're not allowed control over whether or not they bear children, the de facto result is to reduce women in society to brood mares... which is pretty much how all premodern patriarchies tried to handle it.

Men have a reduced palette of options for having sex without having children... but until child support is thrown into the mix, men also have a vastly easier time avoiding responsibility or work in raising the child.

[Terralthra]

You'll encounter no argument from me that reproductive choice - sexual freedom, divorced (pun intended) from the decision to bear children - is entirely a good thing.

But then you have to come to grips with "you shouldn't have had sex if you didn't want a child" is something you shouldn't say to men either.

[Broomstick]

Actually, it's "you shouldn't have sex" but rather "if you have sex you have to accept a non-zero risk of offspring".

Men can take steps to greatly reduce the chances of accidental offspring just as women can. However, if a child results anyway then the adults involved have a responsibility to deal with the resulting human being.

Yes, some aspects of human biology are unfair. It's unfair that men can potentially dodge parental responsibilities much easier than women. It's unfair women do all the gestating and most of the child-rearing, and of those two only the latter can we do anything about. Requiring child-support from the non-custodial parents (note the gender-neutral language there) is one of the ways society attempts to level that playing field.

If a man doesn't want to leave children in his wake he should, at a minimum, use a condom. Restricting sex to women who also use birth control would help, too, and better yet only fuck women who don't want children and who are OK with abortion. The hitch with the latter is that when the pregnancy hormones kick in a woman might change her mind about keeping the proto-kid. In which case yes, you're looking at 18 years of child support in many jurisdictions. You know what is usually ignored? The fact that women are looking at either 18 years of raising the kid, which is a fuckton of work, or else SHE is on the hook for child support if she's not the primary custodian of the child.

The only way out is if BOTH parents agree to give the kid up for adoption, in which case neither is on the hook, the child becomes the responsibility of the adoptive parents. Who, if they later divorce, face the same custody/child support issues of bio-parents.

This is why the type of fraud committed by the man in the thread's situation is stupid - it's not a commitment you can get out of. Once you say "this child is mine" you will be held accountable.

[Terralthra]

If a man doesn't want to leave children in his wake he should, at a minimum, use a condom. Restricting sex to women who also use birth control would help, too, and better yet only fuck women who don't want children and who are OK with abortion. The hitch with the latter is that when the pregnancy hormones kick in a woman might change her mind about keeping the proto-kid. In which case yes, you're looking at 18 years of child support in many jurisdictions. You know what is usually ignored? The fact that women are looking at either 18 years of raising the kid, which is a fuckton of work, or else SHE is on the hook for child support if she's not the primary custodian of the child.

Or she can take a 2 pills which will give her an unusually heavy menstruation and the pregnancy will be over. Failing that, she can have an abortion the old-fashioned way. Men do not have the option to end an unwanted pregnancy in a (relatively) painless way. It's entirely up to the woman, at a time when she's the most - as you yourself said - hormonal.

I'm not saying I have a solution - I don't. I'm not saying that our society is deeply misandrist, because it isn't. But at that moment - when a man and woman who had sex not intending to have a child create one 'by accident' (keeping in mind how fucking rare this situation is), the woman gets to determine whether to have a child or not. She decides whether she wants to be a mother, or even be pregnant. The man gets to determine...nothing. It's up to the mother.

Again, that's not fair. Unless you're going to tell a woman who wants an abortion that she can't have one because she shouldn't have had sex if she doesn't want to raise a child, don't say it to men either. The idea that we should chase down one particular person to give the child-rearing parent support instead of distributing the cost across society is one aspect that seems strange to me, given that apparently half of child support payments to the states don't actually go to the other parent or child anyway.

[Broomstick]

If a man doesn't want to leave children in his wake he should, at a minimum, use a condom. Restricting sex to women who also use birth control would help, too, and better yet only fuck women who don't want children and who are OK with abortion. The hitch with the latter is that when the pregnancy hormones kick in a woman might change her mind about keeping the proto-kid. In which case yes, you're looking at 18 years of child support in many jurisdictions. You know what is usually ignored? The fact that women are looking at either 18 years of raising the kid, which is a fuckton of work, or else SHE is on the hook for child support if she's not the primary custodian of the child.

Or she can take a 2 pills which will give her an unusually heavy menstruation and the pregnancy will be over. Failing that, she can have an abortion the old-fashioned way. Men do not have the option to end an unwanted pregnancy in a (relatively) painless way. It's entirely up to the woman, at a time when she's the most - as you yourself said - hormonal.

Excuse me. "Relatively heavy menstruation" is NOT "painless". Even uncomplicated abortions usually involve some pretty nasty "cramping", which word doesn't quite capture the intensity. They're "painless" only because the modern pharmacopoeia contains painkillers.

You're right - men don't have the option to end a pregnancy because they aren't the one who is pregnant. Biology is NOT fair.

Again, that's not fair. Unless you're going to tell a woman who wants an abortion that she can't have one because she shouldn't have had sex if she doesn't want to raise a child, don't say it to men either.

I wouldn't tell a woman who wants an abortion that. If a woman doesn't want kids AND is anti-abortion I would, indeed, tell her not to have penis in vagina sex so she won't be put in that situation.

Of course, if she is raped and becomes pregnant from that rape (which does happen, even if rare) that's a truly suck situation.

The idea that we should chase down one particular person to give the child-rearing parent support instead of distributing the cost across society is one aspect that seems strange to me, given that apparently half of child support payments to the states don't actually go to the other parent or child anyway.

Again - the purpose is NOT to "give the child-rearing parent support", it's to give the CHILD support. I'm all for a better way of doing that than we currently have if you could suggest it. Perhaps a trust fund. I don't have a great answer for this, either. Coerced abortion, coerced giving the kid up for adoption, and coerced child support could all be called craptastic.

And I agree, the system that takes child support from poor children and pays it to the government goes beyond suck into government child abuse, but because that system is fucked up does not mean parents (of either gender) should get a free pass on their parental responsibilities.

[Terralthra]

I think perhaps you misread. I said a heavy menstruation period is relatively painless, as in way less painful than, say, 9 months of carrying a fetus following by 12-36 hours of labor. Not "painless", but "less painful than several of the alternatives".

And yes, that's more or less my point. It is unfair, and there's no point in denying that. When men complain that the child support system is fair, you can say "yeah, it is, but it's what we've got. Do you have a better idea that doesn't involve depriving a child of necessary support?" That's a reasonable thing to say.

Splitting hairs about "supporting the child" instead of "supporting the child-rearing parent" is silly on its face, unless you think that a 6 month-old fetus can keep a budget.

[blahface]

The dude claimed the kid on a government form as his child. Therefore, he's the father. You don't like it? Next time don't help someone attempt to defraud the system.

It is not entirely clear that he did claim that though. It is just according to one anonymous witness.

If it is true though, it doesn't mean we should see this in black and white without nuance or sympathy for this guy. He wasn't pulling some get rich scheme to defraud the government. He had an eighth grade education and saw that his ex needed financial help with her baby and he believed that signing his name would help.

Now, if you are apart of the "we need to do what's best for the child" crowd (and I don't know that you are), shouldn't we at least treat him with a little more respect than saying, “fuck him, he made his own mess. Let him reap what he sowed”? Yes, he should not have helped in fraud, but we should have a little more respect and sympathy for the guy who was just trying to do what's best for the child.

[Wing Commander MAD]

It is not entirely clear that he did claim that though. It is just according to one anonymous witness.

Nice to see someone else paying attention. Not like I didn't mention that the whole fraud thing is alleged in the third post or anything.

Am I really that unnoticeable...