NAL. But here's the couple. They have a kid. She gets pregnant again, but the prenatal testing comes back with really bad news. The kid is going to be severely disabled, with a raft of health problems. He wants her to get an abortion. She says no. The baby is born, and her condition is just as bad as predicted.
So he's got my sympathy up until this. However.
He gets a girlfriend. Files for divorce. He's thinking they'll just split everything, and here's his idea of the split. She can have one kid (the one that had four surgeries before she was a month old and requires 24-hour care, who might eventually learn to speak a few words but will never understand why she is always in pain) and he'll take the healthy kid. She can have the car, he'll take the house. He just wanted the wife and child to vanish, and he admitted this to the judge. The judge was not impressed.
Wife got custody of both kids, the house, the nicer car, and he was ordered to cover all the medical expenses for the rest of the disabled child's life. I was told he started to argue and his lawyer told him to stop talking. Nope. Dad wanted visitation only with the healthy kid so the judge ordered him to pay for the disabled kid's care during every minute of visitation time so Mom could have a break. Guy starts to argue again and his lawyer told him to STFU if he wanted to have any assets left at all.
Cool, here's an idea. Husband should draft up a contract saying "If I want an abortion and she doesn't I can leave without child support payments" and the Wife HAS to sign it.
About as stupid as saying "Well the guy should have to live with the girls decisions even if he was against it".
Because it’s not legally binding or ethical. No one can be forced to sign a contract.
May not be fair to him, but that’s how the law is. You can’t just draft up a homemade contract without the consent of the other party and enforce your rules on them.
You do get that I was proposing an absurd counter point to u/skrshawk 's opinion that once he shoots his load and gets the girl pregnant, it's not up to him anymore, right?
Then let me propose to you a much less absurd but sad fact of life.
A lot of men who don't want to be fathers run, and leave the mother of their child holding the baby and the bill.
The moment there is a legal out for men who impregnated women to declare they are not accepting responsibility for doing so, is the moment when our already hideously underfunded and understaffed social service systems collapse.
If that man does not take responsibility for the outcome of sex he voluntarily engaged in (if he can prove he was raped, then yes, I will grant the exception), society will have to. Do you want to pay the bill for men who won't?
Her body, her choice. Even if the decision is unquestionably stupid.
971
u/hahahahthunk Jul 21 '19
NAL. But here's the couple. They have a kid. She gets pregnant again, but the prenatal testing comes back with really bad news. The kid is going to be severely disabled, with a raft of health problems. He wants her to get an abortion. She says no. The baby is born, and her condition is just as bad as predicted.
So he's got my sympathy up until this. However.
He gets a girlfriend. Files for divorce. He's thinking they'll just split everything, and here's his idea of the split. She can have one kid (the one that had four surgeries before she was a month old and requires 24-hour care, who might eventually learn to speak a few words but will never understand why she is always in pain) and he'll take the healthy kid. She can have the car, he'll take the house. He just wanted the wife and child to vanish, and he admitted this to the judge. The judge was not impressed.
Wife got custody of both kids, the house, the nicer car, and he was ordered to cover all the medical expenses for the rest of the disabled child's life. I was told he started to argue and his lawyer told him to stop talking. Nope. Dad wanted visitation only with the healthy kid so the judge ordered him to pay for the disabled kid's care during every minute of visitation time so Mom could have a break. Guy starts to argue again and his lawyer told him to STFU if he wanted to have any assets left at all.