Dad wanting to move forward need advice please

[dadof195]

I’m a dad but hope it’s ok to ask here for some advice, trying to get perspective.

In short, I was in a relationship with my ex for a while not living together but spent most of our time together.

We broke up and about a month after she told me she was pregnant. I thought it was a joke at first as so cliche but it wasn’t. I wasn’t ready to be a dad and I didn’t want a baby with her, I told her this. That sounds bad writing it out but I want honest advice here so I need to be honest and say I did tell her this, I thought it was a bad idea to carry on with the pregnancy.

As we had broken up I queried the paternity. I went to some of the scans but I was advised not to contribute to any of the financial side until paternity confirmed. I don’t think this went down that well with my ex, she always said the baby was mine. It was a really stressful time for every one.

I did go and see the baby in hospital when he was born and a few times after. I work away in a demanding job so I’m not around always but I did text and ask for pictures and updates and tried to do the right thing.

I didn’t do anything about the paternity side because I didn’t really know how to address it.

My ex went to csa when the baby was 6 months old. I will admit I didn’t react well to this- I tried to explain to her my financial commitments but this fell on deaf ears. I would have helped if I knew she needed it, but she never asked to arrange anything between us just went straight to csa. I asked for the DNA test through which came back that my son is mine.

Since then I have paid every month, and seen my child when I can although not set days. I know the beginning doesn’t sound the best but I really love being a dad now and look forward to spending time with him.

The problem is this, my ex is being really awkward with contact.

I want to spend more time with my son. But my work means that I don’t have the same days off every week. I’ve asked for flexibility but I just seem to get nowhere.

My ex wants set days but then won’t let anyone else collect my child for me, which makes it hard with my work.

I think she makes it hard as she’s full of resentment for the pregnancy and early days of our child’s life. I do get that to an extent but I’m really trying to move forward from it and do the right thing now.

Is my only option here court or is there a better way forward?

Grandparents should be allowed to see their grandchildren.
Both parties are stuck in the past, arguing about who said what, where, and when. They need to get over it. There are plenty of people who have split and managed to co-parent for the good of the child, and in the long run, the needs of society.

I’ll go against the grain and say I had a child with a man who didn’t want the child. I made the decision to bring that child into the world knowing full well I didn’t have the father’s support. She knew your job and committed to having a child AFTER you’d broken up. I think she is being unreasonable by the sounds you’ve tried to make it up to her and more. Her not letting your parents collect their grandchild is poor on her part I’m sure they’d lovely to be an active part of his life. I don’t think you are being unfair or unreasonable.

unfortunately I don’t have any advice try to give her as much notice as possible.

But she did choose to have a baby on her own? They’d split up and he was honest with her about being ready to be a father and who was to say the child was his? Could have just as easily been someone else’s he paid as soon as he could knowing the child was his.

Well exactly. Mum's work around parenting, not the other way round. No reason he can't do the same.

The child is his. He knew it and went to scans etc. Took him 6 months to get the test and start paying though, and that’s only when she contacted CSA. Likely as he was still spinning the ‘she’s a cheating lying gold digger’ narrative to his stuck up family.

Just because he’s changed his mind now about wanting his son in his life, she does not need to be eternally grateful for the crumbs he throws.

He needs the decide if he’s in or out of the child’s life.

And, if he’s in, then he needs to be available to collect DC on his weekends. He can’t expect the mother to forever work around his needs just because he didn’t want a child with her in the first place.

I would be willing to bet she would be fine with his parents collecting if they showed her a modicum of respect and got to know her as a person. But they haven’t tried. No thanks or apologies. They all want to carry on treating her like she’s beneath them while playing happy families with her DS.

Until they change this narrative they have, it’s always going to cause problems. And I wouldn’t hand my child over to people who are just about ‘civil’ to me. Imagine people thinking you’re beneath them even though you gave birth to their DGC. The disconnect they all still display is galling.

At the moment OP thinks she should be grateful. He’s got that the wrong way round if he genuinely loves his son.

@dadof195 if you truly love your son and want things to become better THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD DO!!!!

Gosh. Hindsight is powerful in this scenario. Unless you had any real reason to query paternity, doing so was a bit of a dick move.

You've paid the CMS assessment since made to - have you ever offered the mother of your child back pay for the months of your son's life you paid nothing towards his maintenance?

CMS is the minimum financial commitment a parent pays. The real cost of raising a child is obviously more than most CMS assessments and paying parents can choose to pay more. Do you do so? Your other financial commitments are irrelevant to CMS. If you have to downgrade to a shitter phone/car/whatever in order to support your child, you do so.

As regards contact, this crappy start seems to have coloured your ex's view, unsurprisingly. Regardless of the paternity/maintenance situation, your child is entitled to contact with you and you can regulate this through applying for a child arrangements order. Orders are fairly inflexible though and your issues with work shifts may not be taken into consideration.

Are you reading the same thing I am?

But she did choose to have a baby on her own?

She chose to keep a baby (not HAVE a baby), she had no choice but to go it alone as he didn't want to be involved.

They’d split up and he was honest with her about being ready to be a father and who was to say the child was his?

SHE could say the child was his and has from the very beginning, the obvious explanation being that he was the only person it could be.

Could have just as easily been someone else’s he paid as soon as he could knowing the child was his.

He thinks it could have been someone else's, but there seems to have been no doubt in her mind he was the father.. he didn't start paying or buying anything until the baby was a year old and ONLY after she went to the csa, he could have asked for a paternity test as soon as the child was born.

He knew the child was his, but wasn't sure whether he wanted it or not, so dipped in and out when it suited him.. she had to force his hand eventually by going to the csa and establishing paternity.

I can't see she's done anything wrong here to be fair.. OP on the other hand...

Also @dadof195, you're talking a lot about HER "resentment" (which tbh is understandable given your behaviour around the pregnancy and questioning paternity), but you don't seem to recognise the role YOUR resentment plays. You now have a child you didn't want, but now he's here you do want him (good). Your parents hate your ex but you expect her to facilitate contact through them.

You and your parents need to take a look in the mirror, recognise your horrible behaviour, and work on how you're going to make contact work in the best interests of your son. Being around people who trash talk his mother is not in his best interests. You could start with a "I'm sorry for the way I behaved, please can we talk about how I can do better?" conversation with the mum. And hope she has it in her to agree. She probably does, because she sounds like a good mum.

Querying paternity in a new and unstable relationship is not necessarily bad, it’s not as if woman don’t say x is the dad when he isn’t!
OP, in the real world, lots of people struggle to manage childcare around work asking grandparents to collect for contact is not unusual at all however, I can understand why your ex is not keen on that. Maybe you could give her week by week update on your schedule and arrange contact that way until trust is rebuilt? It may take but it sounds like you’re trying and you want to have a relationship with your son so that’s a start. I wouldn’t think about going to court just yet, let the dust settle. But don’t give up or walk away, you need to be a consistent person in your son’s life. In the long term, it will probably sort itself out

“Querying paternity in a new and unstable relationship is not necessarily bad, it’s not as if woman don’t say x is the dad when he isn’t!”

OP knew, from timing, that he had a very plausible chance of being the father. Presumably why he showed up to many scans and to visit the baby for the first six months. However, he took no steps to check paternity until he received a CSA letter. He was happy to do the “dad things” without proof (to the extent of being annoyed he wasn’t told about labour) until that point.

I don’t think the Op’s ex is particularly holding onto resentment. She appears to have behaved very honourably. She put him on the birth certificate when he asked (she could have refused and made him go to court.) She also invited him and his charming parents to the lad’s first birthday and were nice to them.

All she has done is stated that her son needs consistency and refused to hand her son over to (unpleasant) strangers that he doesn’t know very well.

You are saying your parents are traditional and worried about her motivations for keeping the pregnancy, but surely your “traditional” parent's would not preferred abortion? (If indeed that is what they are). Not to derail the thread, but surely your trad parents would have vilified her for that as well. I doubt she’d win whatever option she chose.

It’s also interesting that OP thinks he should have had a say in what happened with the pregnancy despite apparently being unsure that he was the father. 🤔

Yep. More holes than Swiss cheese in his excuses. He’d be wise to drop it all now. He knew the baby was his. The ‘cheating, trapping and gold digging’ narrative was him wriggling around trying to get out of any responsibility with his parents. Nothing but a smear campaign designed to deflect.

Time for him to recognise it, admit it to himself, tell his parents he was wrong and tell them he now knows she did nothing wrong besides decide to keep her baby. A decision which he and his family are now glad about.

Shame his family don’t have more moral character. They should have kicked him up the arse to take responsibility sooner rather than buy his BS. I guess at least he’s trying now? The answer 100% lies with him improving how he and his family treat and support the mother of his child. Once the penny drops he may get what he wants.

By traditional I mean they believe children should be born into a marriage.

They couldn't understand anyone wanting to be a single mother on purpose

But they didn’t think you should propose, or otherwise stick around so she wasn’t doing it all in her own?

I don’t think you have the faintest clue what it’s like to know you have a baby growing inside you. Many women who previously might have thought they would have an abortion under the “wrong” circumstances suddenly find themselves unable to face the reality of aborting their own child.

This does not mean they actually want to become a single mother, in fact many may feel sick at the thought of it, but their feeling that they can’t harm their own child is far stronger.

yeah, what happened to "Traditional" meaning, "here's an emergency wedding license. Doesn't matter you can't stand each other. You got to do what's right"

This. I had a friend who was militantly pro choice. “It’s just a bunch of cells” was her catchphrase and she was really quite judging of anyone who expressed even the mildest of feeling that abortion is maybe quite a big deal.

Got pregnant accidentally. Circumstances were ok but not ideal.

Kept the baby. Wonderful mother.

Is now genuinely “Pro Choice”.

They couldn't understand anyone wanting to be a single mother on purpose.

Maybe they should have taught you to be sexually responsible rather than advising you to deny paternity and responsibility.

An abortion isn't an easy option. Men throw it about because it doesn't have any impact on them or their physical or mental wellbeing. You know everything is easy when it's not you who has to do it.

Besides, they don't need to understand anything, she doesn't have to justify her reasoning, she didn't want to terminate the pregnancy. You don't get a choice. If you don't want a child wear a condom, abstain from sex or have a vasectomy. Your control and choices end at ejaculation.

This. Go and see a solicitor to try and get an agreement/ruling on contact. 🙂

I mean so what? Not very tolerant of different viewpoints are they? Sounds like they’ve some prejudice against single parents.

Time for them to make their minds up. Are they glad she ‘chose to be a single mother on purpose’ now? If so, she was right wasn’t she?

You can’t all keep carrying on playing happy families with your son and yet resent and look down on his mum for having him.

All Rather passive aggressive. No but do get your house in order first.

Drop the “all very convenient” crap for a start. Is her life more convenient, or is having a child by you actually massively inconvenient?

Get you parents to give if a rest- they’ve done enough damage already. If you were an adult you would really really start to look at how catastrophically bad their advice has been. And then you would extend it to the
crappy advice they give on every topic.

Don’t insult the mother of your child, or let people do that.

Ask yourself why she should forgive you, or talk to you really when you consider the appalling way you have treated her.

Look to find solutions that don’t involve her having less, so that you can have more.

Be really ashamed of how you’ve treated her. If you aren’t keen on people in real life to know the reality of your actions, have a think about why that is.

The massive problem is that you insulted her from the get go by accusing her of sleeping around and cheating. Then your snobbish parents blame her for getting pregnant and keeping the baby as if you had no role in it. You and your parents have behaved despicably. It would take me a lifetime to forgive you and I wouldn't give the time of day to your 'Keeping up appearances family', never mind hand my child over to them.