What an asshole...

[Jim Alfredson]

That's about all I can say about this:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...STYLE/603090385

[Noj]

I'll add: No class.

[kenny weir]

I don't wish to comment on this particular case, but ...

As a dad whose marriage ended very, very badly about a year and a half ago, I've found myself paying a LOT more attention to things such as family law and so on. And not necessarily supporting such characters but certainly empathising with many of them. In my case, I feel it's pretty fucked up that there is potentially a financial incentive for my ex to restrict my access to our son.

[Noj]

I'll add: sorry to hear that Kenny. As far as I've read, you're all class.

[Bright Moments]

shouldn't this be moved to the politics section........................................

[jazzmessenger]

Actually, I am on this guy's side. He should have options particularly since he didn't want a child in the first place. If she wants to raise their child, that's fine. But I think she must be willing to take finacial responsibility. I know it was't easy, but my mother raised me and my brother without any financial support from my father.

[Jim Alfredson]

Sorry, it's bullshit. You wanna stick your dick in someone? Gotta be ready to pay the consequences. The child didn't make the choice to be born, either. So who's looking out for him/her? "I didn't want the child." So what? I didn't want to get in that fender-bender, but I still have to pay the insurance.

It's called personal responsability.

Kenny, your situation sounds tragic and quite a bit different than this guy. Two different situations, it sounds like. I hope things work out well.

[Jim Alfredson]

  jazzmessenger said:

Actually, I am on this guy's side. He should have options particularly since he didn't want a child in the first place. If she wants to raise their child, that's fine. But I think she must be willing to take finacial responsibility. I know it was't easy, but my mother raised me and my brother without any financial support from my father.

Then it seems like you would support the idea of this guy paying for the kid. Think about how much easier things would've been for your mother had your father given that financial support.

[wigwise]

It seems to me that this dumb ass should have protected himself, especially given the fact that he dated the woman for only 3-months. This Dubay guy is a naive, ignorant, uncaring fool. What's not fair in this whole thing is the fact that this innocent little girl has to suffer for the actions of her biological father. Not to mention the fact that one day she will find out that her Dad went to court so that he legally has no right to acknowledge her existence. I hope the court tosses this case out.

[jazzmessenger]

  Jim Alfredson said:

  jazzmessenger said:

Actually, I am on this guy's side. He should have options particularly since he didn't want a child in the first place. If she wants to raise their child, that's fine. But I think she must be willing to take finacial responsibility. I know it was't easy, but my mother raised me and my brother without any financial support from my father.

Then it seems like you would support the idea of this guy paying for the kid. Think about how much easier things would've been for your mother had your father given that financial support.

Yes, financial support from my father would probably been helpful. But that's the arrangement my parents made, and I am O.K. with that.

The guy should take a responsibility of his action. No doubt. All I wanted to say was he should have gotten the same right as the woman he slept with. It seems like that it is always women's choice to decide if they want to keep a baby or not. That's all. Maybe I am misunderstaing the story...

[Jim Alfredson]

Seems to me this is one of (if not the only...) instance in this man's world where a woman holds the upper hand and it shouldn't be surprising that men are trying to take that away from them, too.

You play, you pay. It's as simple as that.

[JSngry]

So, nobody's ever known of an instance where a woman has deliberately lied about her "fertility status" & gotten pregnant in order to "trap" a man, either personally or financially?

To use the fender bender analogy, what if somebody deliberately involved you in an accident just to collect on your insurance? Would you then feel an obligation? If the driver was giving every indication that he was about to turn right and then at the very last second accelerated into a left turn, how is that in any way your fault, other than that you were on the road? Are you expected to base every single driving decision on the assumption that every driver is going to do the exact opposite of waht they signal?

Apples and oranges, perhaps, but only to a point. This particular guy might not be a good example, and of course a child is a lot more important than a car, but I'm not about to say that the laws don't need some, shall we say, "refining" when it comes to cases such as this.

[JSngry]

  Jim Alfredson said:

You play, you pay. It's as simple as that.

I'm all for that, but otoh, aren't there laws against bait-and-switch on the books to protect the gullible from the predatory?

[Jim Alfredson]

  JSngry said:

  Jim Alfredson said:

You play, you pay. It's as simple as that.

I'm all for that, but otoh, aren't there laws against bait-and-switch on the books to protect the gullible from the predatory?

But how are you going to prove that? It boils down to "he said / she said" with a helpless child caught in the middle. It's better to err on the side of the kid, in my opinion.

And if you're really concerned about getting trapped by a woman, don't have sex with her or use a condom. I have no sympathy for someone putting themselves in that situation.

[BruceW]

Okay, so he should pay,

okay, if you play, you pay, BUT

She lied, she entrapped him,

There are laws against bait and switch

AND, what about this,

She lies about not being able to have a child, he says he would want the child if it happens,

she has a child and gets an abortion on her own and by her own decision, NOW what rights does the man have now that HIS child has been taken from him????? What restitution does he get?? who helps him deal with the loss??

Wake up guys, this nation is one f**ked nation when it comes to double standards. What is good for the goose does NOT mean the same for the gander. It all depends on who you are, where you are and what your social status is.

This will be a very interesting case.

Edited March 10, 2006 by BruceW

[Jim Alfredson]

  BruceW said:

Okay, so he should pay,

okay, if you play, you pay, BUT

She lied, she entrapped him,

There are laws against bait and switch

AND, what about this,

She lies about not being able to have a child, he says he would want the child if it happens,

she has a child and gets an abortion on her own and by her own decision,

Why would she lie about not having a child just to get pregnant and then abort? That doesn't make any sense.

  Quote

NOW what rights does the man have now that HIS child has been taken from him????? What restitution does he get?? who helps him deal with the loss??

Wake up guys, this nation is one f**ked nation when it comes to double standards. What is good for the goose does NOT mean the same for the gander. It all depends on who you are, where you are and what your social status is.

You wanna hear a BIG double-standard that has nothing to do with the laws of men? WOMEN HAVE BABIES, MEN DO NOT.

Not much you can do about that. So yes, the man-made laws are going to be one-sided because nature is one-sided in this case.

[JSngry]

  Jim Alfredson said:

And if you're really concerned about getting trapped by a woman, don't have sex with her or use a condom. I have no sympathy for someone putting themselves in that situation.

Well, yeah. But one of the prerequisites of being betrayed/trapped/played/whatever is a lack of such concern due to the engendering of trust. And trust betrayed is not something that should automatically be rewarded, I should think.

There's plenty of predators out there, and not all of them have penises. Are the child-support laws "genital-neutral" when it comes to such people and their victims? Not really.

Look, the guy in the article seems pretty much like a sleaze to me. Not much doubt about that from what I read there. But the scenario that he finds himself in is one that you don't have to be a sleaze to find yourself in. I've personally know 2-3 guys, decent guys, who have gotten themselves so-trapped by women who blatantly lied about both their fertility status and their relationship "intentions". These women's intents were entirely predatory. Once pregnancy became a reality, the men didn't have any choices but to either get married, pay out the wazoo, or else run away. Legal recourse to force the woman to accept full responsibility for her deceit was not an option, nor is it one today.

Of course it's a complicated subject. But "simplifying" it by a de facto assumption that any and all men who find themselves in such a situation doesn't solve anything. If anything, it makes it worse, because such predatory women have no real fear of being held accountable. And yes, the child suffers, even if the man stays and/or pays. Women such as this don't really want the child, they want what they think they can get with the child - either a man or a payout. And with the laws as they are now, why shouldn't they think this?

Make no mistake - in my experience, there are far more sleazy, opportunistic men than there are women. Far far more. But if you're just going to say that it's okay for a man to be victimized by a predatory woman but not okay for a woman to be victimized by a predatory man, then I don't see how that does anything other than reinforce the very same tendencies that create the problems in the first place. Insecure men will still run at the first sign of true intimacy, and insecure women will still seek to inflict damage before having it inflicted on them.

Gots to be a better way.

[JSngry]

  Jim Alfredson said:

Why would she lie about not having a child just to get pregnant and then abort? That doesn't make any sense.

If people only did things that make sense, we'd not have much need for laws, would we?

[Noj]

  JSngry said:

Gots to be a better way.

I think part of the problem is having laws which are too set in stone, as opposed to having flexible laws in which judgement can be made upon the characters of the individuals involved. It becomes a routine where people can fall victim to the trends of the preceding cases, as opposed to case-sensitive, individually-based trials.

[BruceW]

You misunderstood, the woman lies so she can have the sex. She doesn't want a child but has one.

You didn't address the part of the hypothesis, that being the man's loss, his child aborted, the laws (?)protecting him.

[Jim Alfredson]

  BruceW said:

You misunderstood, the woman lies so she can have the sex. She doesn't want a child but has one.

You didn't address the part of the hypothesis, that being the man's loss, his child aborted, the laws (?)protecting him.

It's the woman's body, it's the woman's choice.

[Jim Alfredson]

I'll re-iterate again... there can't be any sort of "equal protection" in cases like these because the two sexes are not equal. Blame nature. If a man could bear a child, it would be a different matter.

It would be like suing a company over not hiring you because you're a 90lbs, 5 foot woman and part of the job requires lifting 50lbs boxes over and over again. Sorry, but that's a job best made for someone different physically than you. Should that woman be able to sue the company for discrimination?

The laws are going to discriminate against men because women have children, men do not. Women deal with a lifetime of periods and tampons and cramps and all that other shit and we do not. It's not equal and it never will be, therefor the laws cannot be equal.

[JSngry]

  Jim Alfredson said:

You wanna hear a BIG double-standard that has nothing to do with the laws of men? WOMEN HAVE BABIES, MEN DO NOT.

Not much you can do about that. So yes, the man-made laws are going to be one-sided because nature is one-sided in this case.

Yes, women have babies, but they don't make them all by themselves. They need sperm, which, last time I looked, comes from a man. Barring artificial insemenation, that requires a partner. There's lots of ways to get a partner, and not all of them are "ethical". And when it comes to ethics, nature is most assuredly not one-sided. Is it right that the law be?

Relationships are all about power and vulnerabilty, in ever-shifting roles and proportions. To think that there are some (and I stress, some) women who do not seek to exploit the vulnerabilities of a man in order to gain power for themselves to the extreme point of using pregnacy as a weapon to accomplish their ends is just not an accurate assumption.

Now, yes, we're getting into a very sticky area here, because men are supposed to always be "tough", and if they get suckered by a woman, it's supposed to be a "failure" on their part. They're supposed to jsut admit that they got suckered, take their lumps, and move on. But is that really the way we want to play this game? Don't we already have enough cultural woes engendered by both genders' fears about the other? Show me anybody of either gender who doesn't have some deep-seated hangups somewhere deep inside, and I'll show you somebody who's the exceptiont that proves the rule. So, yeah, we got us some problems already. What are we going to do to make them better, maintain the status quo?

Legally, it's an even stickier path. How do you prove intent, anybody's intent? Hell if I know. But I do know that in matters of child custody and child support, the playing field is not level. The closest we have to a levelling mechanism is the laxity in pursuing men who do not follow through on their legally mandated responsibilities, and that's a damn piss-poor way of levelling anything except a child's chances at a fair shake out of life. Far better, I should think, to have the initial decisions and judgements be rendered fairly and equitably, even if it does (and surely it sometimes will) sometimes necessitate defying the current "conventional wisdom". Because a wrong on top of a lie just buries the truth that much deeper.

[7/4]

It's 0-0. Every time Jim makes a good point, Jim makes a better one.

[JSngry]

  Jim Alfredson said:

I'll re-iterate again... there can't be any sort of "equal protection" in cases like these because the two sexes are not equal. Blame nature. If a man could bear a child, it would be a different matter.

It would be like suing a company over not hiring you because you're a 90lbs, 5 foot woman and part of the job requires lifting 50lbs boxes over and over again. Sorry, but that's a job best made for someone different physically than you. Should that woman be able to sue the company for discrimination?

The laws are going to discriminate against men because women have children, men do not. Women deal with a lifetime of periods and tampons and cramps and all that other shit and we do not. It's not equal and it never will be, therefor the laws cannot be equal.

Man strong, woman weak? Woman no can hurt man?

Dude, that is wrong in so may ways.

Nothing at all wrong with recognizing and protecting weaknessess, that's the right thing to do. But that works both ways, and in a lot of different ways as well. And to look at it from a purely biological POV is so....MALE!

Really, what you're looking at as a "weakness" is such in some ways. But in others, it's a tremendous source of power. And like any power and power-holder, not everybody who possesses it is going to use it benevolently, and not everybody who's on the receiving end of it is going to be able to handle it with a balanced enough perspective to keep from gedtting blinded by it. There are going to be situations where exploitation occurs. No way around that. Now, are you sanctioning exploitation based on your perception of a power as a weakness?

Bottom line as I see it - in any "personal" relationship, there has to be something that can at least superficially pass as trust, which in turn requires vulnerability. And to think that "a" woman will not or can not exploit that vulnerabilty and betray that trust if "that" woman has malevolent intentions is just plain wrong. It's something that men are "famous" for doing, but there are women who can play the game far better than most men even thought about playing it. And there are men who are just as naive and, yes, helpless against it as any stereotypically "fragile" female.

All I'm saying is that "equal protection under the law" that is based solely on gender is not going to provide truly equal protection. No way. Life is nowhere near that simple.