From: jrr@nsc.nsc.com (Jerry Roe)
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,alt.child-support,alt.dads-rights
Subject: Re: Equal Male Rights
Date: 19 Aug 92 21:57:26 GMT
Organization: National Semiconductor, Santa Clara

In article <1992Aug17.045933.20323@practic.com> brunner@practic.UUCP (Thomas Eric Brunner) writes:
>In article <1992Aug14.000117.23988@nsc.nsc.com> jrr@nsc.nsc.com (Jerry Roe) writes:
>
...
>
>>                            If she chooses to give birth and give up the
>>child for adoption, the man has no right to the child, in almost all
>>jurisdictions.                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>This is not the case in California, I don't have a case law cite handy but

Correct, hence my comment about "almost all jurisdictions".  But...

>I'm 99% sure that the non-married putative father may move in family court
>for a custody hearing, and retains standing in dependency hearings. There
>may even be a dependency-direct route for the claiment parent, as there is
>for other persons with standing for visitation in family court, and who
>are parties at interest in dependency court.

It's only true since the California Supreme Court decided a few months ago -
maybe 3 or 4 months - in the case where a man, married to one woman, had
an affair with a second, who then got pregnant.  She decided to give the
child up for adoption, irrespective of his wishes to have the child.  He
appealed to the local court which ruled against him, and when it ended up
in the CA Supreme Court (4 years later!), that court ruled that his
Constitutional rights (U.S. Constitution) to equal protection had been
violated, and remanded the case back to the lower court.  Unfortunately,
in the meantime, the child had been adopted out, so the father is back at
the point of having to try to get either custody (doubtful at this point)
or visitation or some sort (who knows).  The precedent is important, but it
may not help this particular father much.  The Court was careful to say that
in this case, where the man had (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) "come
forward in all respects and attempted to exercise his fatherly responsi-
bilities" (financial, custodial, etc. etc.), that just because he had been
denied the right to do so by the mother, did not preclude him from being
considered as the father nor eliminate his rights, per se, to the child.

As to your other comments, California law continues to make the presumption
that any children born during a marriage are *presumed to be the issue of
the marriage*, meaning that a biological (but not married to the mother)
father in that case has virtually no rights nor standing.  That also has
very real negative implications for the husband of a woman getting pregnant
by someone else - he's on the hook for the duration.  I have no idea how the
law is going to deal with the new technology that allows DNA testing
vis-a-vis THAT one.

As a man in either case, it's three strikes and you're out, before you even
come up to bat.  Fathers do NOT have equal standing in family courts, no
matter what the "law" says in print - Family Court effectively ensures that
the mother gets the kids unless you, as the father, can prove her "unfit",
which is almost impossible to do.


Jerry Roe		National Congress for Men
			FREE
			National Council for Children's Rights
jrr@nsc.nsc.com		...!{sun,pyramid,decwrl)!nsc!jrr
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,soc.penpals