Our situation is complicated but I will try to keep this brief. I am a mother of two kids. I divorced their father and we share joint custody. I remarried a year ago and we decided to have a baby. About a month before the baby was born we got a letter from Missouri Social Services stating that my current husband had been named father of a child. He took the test and it came back positive. He had no idea this kid was out there. Anyway, social services have been sending him paperwork wanting his pay etc. In the meantime we had our baby, who had some health issues in the beginning so we were in the hospital and my husband was out of work without pay for a couple of weeks. We can barely afford to take care of the baby and our other two kids right now and are struggling. Missouri wants $400 a month for this child that my husband knew nothing about. The child is 7 years old and the only reason the mother even named him as the father is because she got state assistance. So now he will owe 7 years back child support plus $400 a month. There is no way we can pay our bills and pay this child support and it is really stressing us out. I feel for the child of this woman and have told my husband that he should try for joint custody even though I think the child might be overwhelmed by this. Plus the woman lives 8 hours away from us so that's even more money that we would be forking out. Can anyone give me advise on what to do? How hard would it be for him to get joint custody? That would lower the payments too right? I'm sure the mother is not going to allow him to see this child. She only wants the money.

First he is paying because he had a child and has been filed against. He should have filed in the same court when there was paper work for visits, ( I don't see joint happening unless you leave close enough to keep same schools)

So you get court order for visits, And payments are based on his income, a percentage. He would have had to provide the court records of what he earns during the child support hearings.

He can file for visitation but I too don't see a judge awarding joint custody at that distance. He will have to pay the child support because it is his kid. Did he show up in court with proof of income so the judge could use that to make the child support order? Or did he not go so basically got a default order based on his absence?

Lets separate two issues here; Support and custody/visitation. The courts will keep them separate as well. The courts are unlikely to grant joint physical custody and, even if they did it would probably not affect support.

If he goes to court for visitation it can be enforced.

As for retroactive support. If he was not aware of this child, then he may not be liable for back support. But he needs to get an attorney to fight that.

It's his child - he's entitled to visitation if he requests it. I don't see any form of joint custody at this time.

Quite frankly I'm a little bit chilled that you are thinking of joint custody in order to lower the support payments - if that's what you are saying.