Why?

[ColdSteelRain]

My GF has decided after ten years to have an affair with a 21 year old. She's 40...

Fair enough - I've moved out. I'm paying her £50 a week maintenance and trying to sort myself out some digs.

So why is she refusing to give me Parental Responsibility? I'm the boys Dad (he's 7) I idolise him.

There was no violence, I work hard. Pay my way. Yet she's making it nigh on impossible to see him.

As an unmarried Dad I have the same rights you do over my lad. None.

Go get legal advice and apply for PR.

Sorry this is happening to you

to gain PR is fairly straightforward.....ring your local court and get the papers filed! are you on birth cert?

You need to file a Form C1 -- help with filling it in here.

This is such soooo a lesson I'm going to teach my lad.

It's not such an issue now, though, Nuttybear -- if a father is named on the birth certificate from December 2003 then he automatically has parental responsibility. But the OP's DS is 7 so would have been born and registered before that, so the old law applies.

Not sure what this post is all about.

As far as I'm aware you are a fairly well known military blogger.

Really, what do you want people to say - are you looking for legal advice? Sympathy? What does "Why" mean in this context?

Give us a bit more of a clue and I'm sure you'll get some directed responses.

Prof It just I might get him to wear a male chasity belt until he knows his name is going to go on the birth cert. He is such a softy like his Dad it would break him heart to be apart from a member of his own family. So my sympathy if not cat's

Er, Nuttybear, would be interesting to know exactly how you've measured my sympathy level in the absence of any evidence at all about it.

If you have another read, (or you might need several if it's really very difficult for you), I'm asking the guy for a bit more info, to see where he is wanting to take this.

Cat I was just being nice to a stranger! I really came on the Dadnet bit to seek advice on sheds. It is unlikely ColdSteelRain is anyone I know in RL. I was just think this week I would hate my son to fall for a cruel partner male or female, that's all. Knock your self out investigating something you will never know the truth about!

This is one of the reasons why people who have children together should get married

I have said it before, I will say it again

Both parents should protect themselves with the law....when relationships break down you don't expect the person you love to turn into a vindictive monster

But sometimes they do

Yep! AnyF* that's why I waited until I found the right man. It's sad to think that the majority of men need to mature so much before you marry them! I exclude my brother but not my Dad or baby brother from that.

ColdSteelRain Sorry for your situation.
I don't wish to sound patronising so apologies if I do come across that way.
So many otherwise intelligent people fail to realise that co-habiting in itself has no legal bearing.
They live together for years without realising that, legally, they are unrelated to one another.
The bottom line is that it is not for an outside "agency" to assume for you that you're in a long-term relationship just because you're sharing a house or the father of any child (nor should it be, frankly.) born in a long-term cohabiting relationship.
It's up to the cohabitees themselves to make such a declaration of parenthood.

(Conversely, any child born within a marriage is assumed to be fathered by the husband -purely because on marriage the couple declared themselves to be in it for life).

Get legal advice. If your partner (sounds a bitch, by the way) denies you're father of son, get proof from other sources to prove that you are.

Your story is sad and if you're fundamentally a decent bloke I hope you get to see your child.