Debate: Can a Betrayed Husband walk away from his wife's affair child?

[cocorico]

This is a spin-off from another thread.

 

Situation: A man discovers that his wife had an affair years ago, hid it from him and pretended that nothing really happened.

 

The timeline of the affair matches the estimated conception period of their child. The man gets suspicious and decides to verify the paternity of the child in question. As it turns out, the child isn't his; the child is the biological offspring of the cheating wife and her affair partner.

 

In the other thread, some posters thought that he is fee to walk away. Others thought that this seems very materialistic and selfish.

 

I invite posters to post their opinions. I hope we all agree that it is completely wrong for a woman to cheat, get pregnant, hide the affair and then pass of the child as her betrayed husband's.

 

The questions that concern me are:

 

*Is it right/wrong if the betrayed husband decides that he does not want to spend his hard earned money on the affair child?

 

*Should this child inherit the husband's assets, including but not limited to family wealth, an inherited title (eg Duke/Count in Europe)?

(Please remember that under law, an inherited title can only be passed down to the eldest biological heir).

 

*Should the husband stop loving this child?

 

*Should the paternal grandparents be informed that the child in question is not the husbands and therefore not their biological grandchild.

 

*Should the husband be forced to invest his money and love in the affair child if he doesn't want to?

 

*Can the husband walk away from the child's life?

 

*Would you call the husband 'selfish, materialistic, immoral and callous' is he decides to walk away?

 

Remember, the time the husband and child have been misled, bonded and loved each other may also impact the husband's decision.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a controversial topic but I look forward to a spirited debate. Please refrain from personally targeting any poster and respect each other's right to post; we may not agree with each other's opinion but we should respect the right of each individual to form his/her own opinion.

 

I discovered recently that my oldest brother was such a child. My mother denies it, of course, insisting that the babies must have been switched in hospital (to account for his having a different blood group) although he is the spitting image of the man alleged to be his father.

 

My father had doubts about paternity (he was stationed abroad when my brother was conceived, though they passed the baby off as "premature") but accepted him as his own flesh and blood and never treated us any differently. And, until recently, I had no idea (I always assumed his different appearance was due to some throwback) that paternity was an issue. My brother still has no idea.

 

My father is of that generation where a man does his duty, no questions asked, and he would never have considered for a moment turning H's back on my brother, whatever he may have felt about my mother. I know parents are not supposed to have favourites, but I do think he loves my oldest brother that little bit more, and it's easy to see why. He was a lovely child, even if things have not turned out well for him as an adult.

[Scott Thomas]

You do realize that Coolit and Janedoe are both female admitted cheaters right? So... no wonder they get angry when men tell them they wouldn't take their ****.

 

OT: I would not be able to get rid of the children sadly enough, the bond would be too strong.

 

But, rest assured, I would be creative in my revenge against the mom. She would have wished she practiced safe sex while cheating.

 

We all have our character flaws. The fact that Coolit and Janedoe broke their marriage vows does not stop them from commenting here.

 

Coolit:

To you, my question may seem materialistic. My neighbour is involved in a 17 million pounds paternity fraud case. Some people spend their lives working hard and achieve their goals. It's only natural that they would be concerned with protecting their assets.

[GorillaTheater]

Well I understand if the baby was just born and the H got a paternity test before signing the birth certificate.

 

But after a few years have gone by and they love this child because they thought the child was his, then I can't understand a man that would walk away from that.

 

Although I CAN understand, if divorce is on the table, why the husband might prefer that the bio-father be at least as much on the financial hook for child support, if possible, as he is.

[Eggplant]

In this situation, the fundamental idea is that because somebody else cheated you, do you "catch the baby" they dropped, or do you allow the innocent child to suffer when you could catch it. I compare it to the situation in which the husband has an affair, and the wife has to share his resources with a third party that was never part of the marriage contract. It's not fair ...

 

In the only cases I've seen with this situation, the non-biological father who has raised the child fights tooth and nail to keep custody of the child he loves.

 

I would be curious to see the correlation of these answers to people's feelings on whether a woman should be able to abort a baby she conceived via rape... It's an entirely different situation, but the paying for another's crime against you by caring for somebody more innocent than you is happening in both cases...

[odin673]

In this situation, the fundamental idea is that because somebody else cheated you, do you "catch the baby" they dropped, or do you allow the innocent child to suffer when you could catch it. I compare it to the situation in which the husband has an affair, and the wife has to share his resources with a third party that was never part of the marriage contract. It's not fair ...

 

In the only cases I've seen with this situation, the non-biological father who has raised the child fights tooth and nail to keep custody of the child he loves.

 

Lots of children suffer every day. I believe that everyone has a right to pass on their genes(you know, the biological "purpose of life").

 

With that said, I'm not sure what I would do. I haven't been in that situation nor have I had kids. It's easy to judge others from afar(especially when you're a woman and being duped isn't even remotely possible).

[Maleficent]

This is a spin-off from another thread.

 

Situation: A man discovers that his wife had an affair years ago, hid it from him and pretended that nothing really happened.

 

The timeline of the affair matches the estimated conception period of their child. The man gets suspicious and decides to verify the paternity of the child in question. As it turns out, the child isn't his; the child is the biological offspring of the cheating wife and her affair partner.

 

In the other thread, some posters thought that he is fee to walk away. Others thought that this seems very materialistic and selfish.

 

I invite posters to post their opinions. I hope we all agree that it is completely wrong for a woman to cheat, get pregnant, hide the affair and then pass of the child as her betrayed husband's.

 

The questions that concern me are:

 

*Is it right/wrong if the betrayed husband decides that he does not want to spend his hard earned money on the affair child?

 

*Should this child inherit the husband's assets, including but not limited to family wealth, an inherited title (eg Duke/Count in Europe)?

(Please remember that under law, an inherited title can only be passed down to the eldest biological heir).

 

*Should the husband stop loving this child?

 

*Should the paternal grandparents be informed that the child in question is not the husbands and therefore not their biological grandchild.

 

*Should the husband be forced to invest his money and love in the affair child if he doesn't want to?

 

*Can the husband walk away from the child's life?

 

*Would you call the husband 'selfish, materialistic, immoral and callous' is he decides to walk away?

 

Remember, the time the husband and child have been misled, bonded and loved each other may also impact the husband's decision.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a controversial topic but I look forward to a spirited debate. Please refrain from personally targeting any poster and respect each other's right to post; we may not agree with each other's opinion but we should respect the right of each individual to form his/her own opinion.

 

Free to walk away? Absolutely!

I don't see how this would be materialistic and immoral seeing as, well, the wife cheated on him.

 

Now if the husband finds out the kid isn't his once the kid is a few years old and an attachment developed between the two, it gets WAY more complicated…

While the man has no responsibility whatsoever towards the child, he is making the child pay for his mother's mistake. I honestly don't know what to answer in this situation...

[runningfar]

I would be curious to see the correlation of these answers to people's feelings on whether a woman should be able to abort a baby she conceived via rape... It's an entirely different situation, but the paying for another's crime against you by caring for somebody more innocent than you is happening in both cases...

 

I saw no one saying that a man should be legally obligated to support a child that was not his. Just that it would be morally reprehensible to leave a child once a bond is established because of later realizations that they did not share DNA despite sharing the bonding.

As a personal issue, yes, if I was raped and became pregnant I would keep the child. I cannot become pregnant, but I have been raped and know how that feels.

And it's still not an exact parallel, because in that situation the mother knows before the child is born, almost everyone had no issue with the man leaving before the child was born or immediately after and not raising the child that is not his... people had an issue with a year to a decade plus of bonding, and then throwing out the child with the mother. If I had raised step children from infants and the father cheated on me, if I was given a choice in the matter, I would absolutely not be absent from their life.

 

I would be in favor if the mother both conceived in infidelity and lied about it for years, if the father who raised the child be granted full paternal rights and favor in petitioning for custody. But that's the opposite of abandoning the child.

 

I stand by my personal opinion - which has nothing to do with legally mandating something - that if I found out a man had done this and the next thing out of his mouth wasn't "I realize what an atrocious thing it was and have done everything I can to undo the damage" I would never want to speak to him again. I love my fiancé with all my heart, and hearing something like that from him without contrition would be enough that I could never see him in the same way again. It would come the same to me as if he suddenly told me he cheated on his ex wife and that she deserved it, so he had to do it. You can't make the choice for other's behavior, but you can ALWAYS make the choice for your own.