On Sun, 26 Nov 2006 10:45:55 -0500 Werebat wrote
Dave wrote:
We've all heard the horror stories about people splitting up and
losing their kids in a divorce where the laws favor the mother most of
the time.

I'm in a different group. I'm part of the growing group of unmarried
fathers. Many of us (maybe most of us?) were turned into dads against
our wishes. We've had the finger wagging lectures about our
responsibilities. We've heard about our obligations and how we have to
"step up to the plate".

That being said, what ever happened when it comes to having any
rights? When my son was born all I got was a form to sign that said I
was the father and that the mother gets full custody. We go to court
and I get assigned a lump of money I have to come up with every week
and all the medical bills for the birth of the baby but still no
mention of custody or visitation other than it being reserved until a
later date.

When mom decides she doesn't want me around anymore what am I
supposed to do? I can't afford to hire a lawyer. This system sucks!

The situation will be corrected BY THE STATE only when it become
fiscally beneficial FOR THE STATE to do so. Be that by an increase in
revenue or a decrease in expense.

What can fathers do to make it EXPENSIVE for the State to continue
ignoring their rights?

- Ron ^*^

I would love nothing more than making it as expensive as possible for
the state to trample on my rights this way! I wonder what would happen
if the family court was flooded with motions from people such as
myself, asking for visitation and/or custody all around the same time
period? What if they had a huge pile of paperwork they had to handle
dumped in their laps. It would make sense for them to deal with it by
having, at the very least, some kind of default visitation built in
along with the support orders. It would also slow down the process for
getting support orders in place which might also encourage some people
to seek another way of handling support. Since the default notion is
that any father should be a decent enough guy to support their own
child, the default notion should also be that a father is not
dangerous enough to be denied visitation. Of course, there'd have to
be a way to keep dangerous parents (both male and female) away from
their children.