No father of a child should ever complain about giving up as much money as they can put together for their child’s well being. Alimony is where any bitterness or resentment should be directed.
But there is little that is more tragic than for a man to find out that the child that he has loved, cared for and supported is not his. There are situations where it is unethical for the courts to force a person to pay for support of a child that is falsely represented. These are usually situations where the rights of the birth mother are put ahead of the well being and rights of the deceived father, the real father, the child and everyone else involved, and that would be unethical.
For a definition: the only situations being discussed here are situations where the mother was clearly aware of having one or more other sex partners where any one could be the father, but deliberately lied or withheld the facts.
It must be considered that, with the opportunity to get free or low cost paternity tests these days, there is no excuse for adults who have even the slightest doubts to delay until the child is old enough to suffer from the parents’ drama, promiscuity or inaction.
If a child and father have bonded, then the obligations, capability and rights of the adoptive father should be considered. It is unethical to allow a clearly and willingly deceptive birth mother to create such trouble and to get away with it without sanctions. No woman has a right to do such a thing without facing consequences.
This is such a messy situation because there is no one case that is ever common. With the vast increase in a huge variety of drug and alcohol abuse, family dysfunction, immaturity and mental illness cases, bizarre new situations are happening every day. No single program or formula for dealing with deceptive parenthood is possible.
In fact, they are all inherently unethical and messy situations where multiple “parents” and guardians are able to step in to demand competing and varied kinds of rights to access, custody and visitation, sometimes on as cold a basis as if the child is property and not a human being. What if the real father is in prison and demands that the child visit?
It would definitely be unethical for the courts to put birth parent status ahead of issues of competency, drug abuse, criminal behavior, mental problems, deliberate acts of lying, deceit or fraud when the adoptive fathers are good parents and have done no wrong.
Such favoritism in the face of enormously bad conduct is unethical and is not what the woman’s rights movement was about.
Little can be done when substance abuse, generational social failure and mental illness are the giant elephants that sit in the room of our societies and those giant elephants are treated as if they do not exist.
When it comes to parental obligations and rights, the only true and ethical burden is to get children into homes and shared custody arrangements where they will not be abused, sold for drugs or killed. The standard should never be to pamper or unfairly benefit deceptive birth mothers or to coldly shut out good and capable adoptive fathers.