Sir Xsarus wrote:
gbaji wrote:
You're also missing the most common case. Guy knocks up his girlfriend, then they break up. Then he wants nothing to do with her or the child. Since they weren't married, she has to employ legal action to try to force paternal responsibility on him. If he moves, or doesn't have a permanent address, or in any other way avoids this, it's nearly impossible for her to accomplish. And she has to prove he's the father, which requires some form of paternity test. And frankly, she also may not think it's worth the effort anyway.
I think you're pulling this fact out of your ***. You're basically saying that out of marriage there isn't a good legal recourse and that it's way way more difficult then the exact same situation where the two people are married. Maybe this is the case, but I'm going to need some actual laws or cases to establish this. Remember, this isn't a one night stand, it's two people in a relationship, who then break up after there is a kid. To make it easier, you don't have to consider details about actually getting a divorce, the guy just runs off in both situations.
What he's trying to say is that in order to be served with a paternity suit, you have to be served. If the man in question cannot be found, he cannot be served. The suit can still go through but the woman will probably never see a dime of child support. In the case of a married couple, the husband is assumed to be the father and, unless both parties attest to it, his name is put on the birth certificate. In the case of a divorce, there is no paternity suit there is just a judgement of whether child support is due. In this case, the courts would have the recourse of a garnishment of wages among other options to make sure the mother gets some, if not all, of the child support she is due.
It's not that out of marriage there isn't a legal recourse, it's that out of marriage the legal recourse has about twice as many steps and the extra steps are about twice as hard as compared to in marriage.
That is what he means by better protected by the law.
At least, I think.