My daughter is 4 years old and I broke up with her father not long after she was born. The father has never lived in the same town as us, and has rarely seen his daughter. He only lives a couple of hours away, but has never been willing to use his money to get here. We are still on speaking terms and though he tells me he loves his daughter he has never put in any effort with her. He has never even paid child support.
Suddenly he decided that he wants to be part of my daughter’s life and have her stay with him. This really worries me for quite a number of different reasons:
Firstly, he has implied that he intends to have my daughter around his friends. He has told me numerous stories over the years about some of these people… some of the stories include dealing and taking drugs, living in filth and abusing animals. He also wants to invite his latest girlfriend into my daughter’s life. He has only just started dating this girl, and I know absolutely nothing about her. I really don’t feel comfortable leaving my daughter with him and his girlfriend.
He abuses alcohol on a regular basis and has described himself to me as an "alcoholic". He has a history of mental illness and has problems with anger. He also suffers from bipolar and has threatened to kill himself more than once. The times when he actually has come to visit us he has had a lot of trouble dealing with our daughter’s behavior. One time he became frustrated and burst into tears because she had a small tantrum.
He really doesn’t seem as though he is mature enough to look after a child. He has no manners and thinks that it’s funny to teach children bad habits. I have witnessed him saying inappropriate things to other children in the past. The things that he said to the child were offensive and sexist and go against the type of things that I have tried to teach my daughter so far. I want my daughter to have morals, but I don’t think that her father would be doing her any good in that respect.
My biggest problem is that I feel as though he is rushing into things. My daughter barely knows him and I don’t think she should suddenly be left to spend a night with her father, who is basically a complete stranger to her. I am also suspicious about his motives for suddenly wanting to spend time with his daughter. It is odd that he had no interest in her before and now he wants to take such a big step. It feels like he doesn’t have our daughter’s best interest at heart and is only wanting to do this for himself. What will happen when he realizes that parenting is not as simple as he thought it would be? I think my daughter will behave herself for the first few visits while her father is giving her gifts and spoiling her, but as soon as they get used to each other things will change. I am scared that my daughter will get attached to her father and then end up having her heart broken.
I told the father that I was worried, and he told me that there’s nothing I can do to stop him.
I don’t want to stop him entirely from seeing his daughter. All I want is for his visits to be supervised and for him not to be allowed to bring his friends along.
Is it within my right to set these boundaries? Is her father entitled to overnight visits? And should I get a solicitor?
If anyone could give me some information here it would be very much appreciated. Thanks.
Are you thinking about selling your home yourself? then
1. Under no circumstances do you let your daughter go with him or even spend the night for now.
2. You need to file for child support, call your local attorney general’s office if you cannot afford a lawyer, it is their job to help you get child support.
3. When you go to court,, you need to ask for supervised visitation, because of the reasons you listed above.
4 I’m not sure where you’re located but in Texas the supervised visitation is for 3 yrs, then it reverts to normal visitation guidelines, unless there are other circumstances that would warrant extending supervised visitation.
5. Ask the judge if he can make it a stipulation that he be on bi-polar medication, goes to counseling and takes parenting classes.
Now as for your daughter’s father, he will probably get really angry, but he needs to get over it. The fact of the matter is, he has the right to see his daughter, but you have the right and the responsibility to ensure your daughter health, happiness and welfare.
As for him wanting to introduce her to his new girlfriend, I would say, "NO!" he has to establish a relationship with his daughter before he starts trying to nurture a relationship btwn your daughter and his girlfriend.
Do not let him intimidate you under any circumstances. You are not wrong for having concerns about this situation, it sounds fishy to me too. If you follow these steps, everything should fall into place.
Make sure that you read the court order carefully before you sign it so that you can let them know if you agree with all the stipulations this will be the time to have things either removed, ammended, or added. Put the court order away somewhere safe, so that if you need it for any reason, you know where it is. (trust me, at some point in your daughter’s life you will need that court order on hand at least 5-10 times)
Once visitation starts, keep a record of all visitations (especially the ones he missed without letting you know), write down how your daughter felt or acted once the visitation/missed visitation In Texas, if they cconstantly do not notify you in advance that they will not be able to make it for their court ordered visitation then you can actually request an adjustment of his visitation rights.
I hope this helps and Good Luck!!
If you want your daughter to meet him, for her benefit, then allow supervised visitation with you present. If he don’t like those terms then that means he really don’t want to see her. What is he going to do about it? Take you to court? They’d have him in jail for back child-support if he couldn’t pay it. Any lawyer he finds will tell him the same thing.
Continue to let him see her with you around. If he wants more than that, tell him to take you to court for visitation and you, in turn, get a child support order. If none of this happens, he doesn’t really want anything to do with her and there’s an ulterior motive. he probably just wants to use her as a chick magnet. Women fall for the single father bit if he can pull it off. Set your guidelines and make him follow them. Just because his name may be on the birth certificate, doesn’t mean he has any rights to her. He actually has to enforce his paternal rights, which in turn means he’ll have to start paying.
I work for 2 attorneys and we have had some similar situations come through our office. This is the thing. You can’t legally keep him from seeing his child unless a judge orders it. I would recommend you hiring a family law attorney. Tell them everything you just told us in this message. Also, your attorney can make it to where the visits would be supervised by someone and also that if he gets overnight visits the judge can order no person of the opposite sex stay with them. The judge can also order and alcohol treatment for him before he gets any visitation rights. You might want to consider warning him about this thought. If you take this to court he will be ordered to pay child support. If he wants visitation rights then he has to pay you child support unless you tell the judge otherwise.
Anyways, I would strongly recommend speaking to a family law attorney. Most first time consultations are free.
Get a lawyer and get supervised visits only. You will need proof
to support your accusations. If you really want to stop him then
call the cops on him. If you can get him arrested no judge in the
world will give him joint custody or allow unsupervised visits.