I can actually tell the story from the other side, and as a person in the relationship who is not the biological parent.
I know this is long, but let me give you a backstory.
My wife had a child with this dude back in 2008. He was around for the first couple of months. They lived together but he wasn't really helping her with much of anything and worked a dead end job. She was in Nursing school, in her last year. After the first couple of months he disappeared and she didn't hear anything from him. 6 months later, this dude takes her to court for full custody of the child and claims she has been denying him access to the child. (By this time she had sent her daughter to stay with her mom so she could focus on the last semester of school) Mind you she had been trying to get in contact with him to help her when he initially disappeared, but got no response. She was doing clinicals and taking care of a newborn at one point, and he wouldn't even come watch the child. He dragged her to court for a year, FOR NOTHING. She was even willing to let allow limited visitation at first (considering he is irresponsible and didn't trust him with a child that young). Eventually when he realized there was no way he could get full custody, and everything started coming out, he changed his request to joint custody.
Eventually, after more stuff came out in court, they offered a deal for joint legal custody, and for my wife to get full physical custody, and a bunch of other BS little stuff that wasn't really in my wife's favor. She didn't want to agree because her lawyer hadn't even gotten to finish her case, but she had already racked up almost $50,000 work of attorney's fees. So she did to try to get it over with.
Sidenote: In the midst of this, my wife told him, I don't even want child support if we can just come to an agreement and save money from these lawyers.
Longer story short, they settled and he's been giving her hell ever since. And now we stay in Georgia (he's in NC) So every time he wants to be an A-hole he files for something in court and we have to drive up there. He was paying $400/month in support, but after she moved to Georgia he filed for a recalculation. She was making less money, and healthcare was more so then he ended up paying $450, and she wasn't even gonna bother. But then he supposedly lost his job in September and started working in December (We don't believe it, his company just got bought out and he works at the same place). So he didn't pay any child support from that time. Then when it was time recalculate, he brought one pay stub (you're supposed to bring 3) from a period where he missed a week of work. Now he's ordered to temporarily pay like $205/month because that's the "gray area" when you don't make a certain amount of money, so things like Child Care aren't taken into consideration (Child care is $620/month). But even since that order, he's only paid like half of it.
She was supposed to go back to court because, even when you're not working you have to contribute something. Also his whole story sounded suspicious and he didn't have the required documentation. He was supposed to bring his bank statements to show how he supported himself while he "wasn't working", his tax returns, his letter of employment to show when he started, and the correct pay stubs. The day of the hearing to recalculate, we get an email from my wife's attorney saying that HE now has an attorney, and that he's on the verge of getting a full-time job (he now works another dead end PT job), and the support is gonna change when our daughter starts school this year, and that they were granted a continuance. By this time we were already half way to NC. But it's crazy, because paying that measly $205/month would be less expensive than his lawyer, which makes no sense to us. Why not just pay the child support and save some money?
He clearly got a lawyer because he knew he was gonna get caught up in his lies. Plus his lawyer is crooked himself. Since the $50,000 in lawyers fees, my wife had accrued probably another 10-15K in fees. But at the beginning of this year she got one of those legal plans through work, so she doesn't have to pay anything.
At this point we're gonna file a motion for contempt, try to get attorney's fees and whatever else. If he wants to keep paying thousands of dollars for attorney's fees instead of talking to us... He can do it, and he'll be living like a bum for the rest of his life. The only problem is his parents are enabling him and pay most of his attorney's fees and spend more time with his daughter than him.
The whole situation is just sad and unnecessary. Add to that, he's upset because his daughter calls both of us daddy. As the person that supports her the most financially and equally emotionally as anyone that she's related biologically to, I don't have a problem with it. But I guess I could see why it might bother him. But since he doesn't even support her financially or communicate with her other than visitation (where she spends most of the time with her grandparents), we really don't care. But we always enforce to our daughter that he is her biological father an he loves her. Add to that, we asked her what she wanted to call me, "Jermaine", daddy, daddy "Jermaine." She said "Daddy... Daddy is a good name for you.
My heart melted brehs...
