Child Custody Question

[granny630]

My daughter has filed custody papers for her 11 month old baby. The father of the baby (they are not married) has been "in hiding" so they cannot find him to serve him his papers. She talked to her lawyer the other day and he said that she will still have her court date, but he will ask for a "default". What does this mean?

Also, since he has not been served with his papers what happens in court now, since there will probably be no response from him.

Since she has been back in the city that she moved to in New York about four weeks ago, he has not sent her one cent towards anything to do with the baby. She has called him a couple of times only to tell him the baby is fine, hasn't learned anything new, etc. He has called her a few times and said he would like to see the baby and for her to give the baby a kiss and hug for him. she told him to just talk to him on the phone so he could hear his voice and he re plied with why thats all he does is play with the phone. now he says he wants the baby on father's day. should she mention this to the lawyer? i posted a thread here before e xplaining how he does drugs (cocaine) and he is also bi polar and does not take his medicine.

Thanks for you opinions regarding this.

granny

 

[Duranie]

Your daughter needs to realize that if she files for child support/paternity, he will be granted some sort of visitation most likely. She chose to have a baby with him, he does have rights.

A default judgement means a judgement in absense, since the father may not respond.

So, she needs to determine if filing for CS, and giving him visitation which will eventually be unsupervised, is worth it. She can certaionly ask for drug testing but she will have to prove he is using drugs and not just throw accusations out there.

So he does have the rights to a relationship with the child if he chooses.

She needs to figure out how she is going to raise this child if she gets no help from the dad, which sounds like a distinct possibility.

 

[granny630]

child Custody

she realizes he has rights, but at least he could have the decency, if he cares about his son at all, to come out from hiding and acce pt the papers that are being served on him. if he also cared that much about his son, he would be supplying him with items that he needs now, not that sheneeds his help. she has an excellent job and makes very good money.

as far as his drug use, he is very smart about that as he knows how long this stays in his system, therefore, they would have to drug test him at random when he does not know about it. i have witnessed his drug use and so has my other daughter. when you walk in their house on the day the baby came home and the house wreaks of marijuana i guess there is no guessing that he does drugs.

he also has a prior record -- nothing real serious. i believe it has to do with stealing and possible drug use.

she also does not know if he ever signed a " paternity" paper when the baby was born. i told her she needs to try to find that out.

well court is tomorrow and we will see if he ste pped up to be the great father he claims to be and accepted the papers that have been served on him or if he will just totally ignore them and continue with his threat that he doesn't care about her, her mother or father and he will put a bullet in someone's head. nice guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Duranie]

Well at this point, she cannot force him to be a dad.

She should know if he signed patenrity papers. Generally when parents are unmarried the father must sign an acknowledgement of paternity at the hospital. If one was not signed then DNA must be done.

But back to my comments, if this guy does not clean up his act, I would not want the child around him. If she pushes for child support, he will push to see the child. Even if she does not get much child support, he is entitled to visitation with the child is the courts set it up.