Who‘s the Daddy Now?

A landmark legal ruling in Germany means men who have been paying financial support for children they believed to be theirs, have been awarded the right to find out who the real fathers are.

German Federal Courts have ruled that mothers do not have a right to keep men in the dark and will have to tell them who the real fathers of their children are.

This is part of significant changes to the German legal landscape making it more difficult for mothers to simply hide the identity of the father of their children. The thinking of the Court (put simply) goes

·         All things being equal children have the the right to know who their fathers are.

·        This right of children, is superior to any right of a woman to keep the identity of the father a secret.

·        Men have a right to discover the identity of the actual father of a child they previously thought was theirs.

·         This is also superior to the right of the mother to keep that identity a secret.

This last element sprang from a recent judgment.

 A couple split and the woman claimed the man as the father of a child born shortly after.  Remaining separated the man paid for the usual mother and baby purchases and then maintenance as any responsible father should. He discovered he was not, in fact, the genetic father.

Feeling cheated and used he wanted a little under €5000 repaid from the real father however his former partner refused to disclose the father’s identity. He sued and both the administrative court, and the Higher Regional Court found in his favour, but his partner appealed on both occasions.

Now the federal court has ruled that although the decision does infringe on her right to privacy, she had given up the full measure of her entitlement by naming the wrong man as father.

There are some who claim that this ruling will harm the child and harms women. They are at least partially correct. Women may have to repay money obtained by mistake or, dare I say, by deception. They now do not simply choose which father offers the best life chances or, at least, not after the error is known to the man in question.

Surely though, if the above thinking is correct then where this naturally heads is that it should also be an offence to wrongly make a man believe a child is theirs – to invest in them emotionally and spiritually and to perhaps decide to pass up other opportunities to reproduce in favour of caring for this child.

We do accept, that in this day and age, a woman may not always be positive as to which of the men in her life is the father of her child. Circumstances may be such that one might prefer not to ask questions for fear of the impact of the answers. However Cork Monkey thinks, that once a baby has put is an appearance it is a ladies responsibility to make sure of her facts (although how to do this both discreetly and honorably is beyond this poor chimp).

I also understand that on occasion that some women may find themselves in a position where they simply have no idea of the name of the father themselves.

On these occasions Cork Monkey suggests that at some point during the proceedings one should always ask “with whom am I having the pleasure”.

 CM (:-(/)