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vehelh · Jan 23, 2009, 10:22 AM

I have been married for 9 years. My husband and I have 2 kids. About 2 years ago we seperated(not legally) and I met someone and got pregnant. During our short 2 year relationship we were on and off due to his drinking and abuse of me and my children. My kids went and lived with their father for the past year and I had my baby and tried to make a go of it with the boyfriend. He hasn't been able to hold a job and we have lived with different relatives of his just to have a roof over our heads and support. I worked until the day my baby was born. Recently though my husband and I have worked things out and decided to get back together and he has accepted my baby and loves her dearly. (btw she is 6 months old). Anyway her father(the boyfriend) refuses to accept that its over between us and swears he isn't giving up. He uses the baby to get to me and frankly I've had enough. I moved to another state to live with my kids and husband. We are a happy family and the nutcase boyfriend is making all kinds of harassing phone calls. Threatening at times to me. We haven't established any kind of legal orders or things like that. I don't feel he would ever hurt her but he isn't all there when it comes to me. It's as if I'm his property. How do I get on with my life and keep my baby and family safe from him. What rights does he have to her and what rights do I have? How can we move on and keep him out of the picture?

N0help4u · Jan 23, 2009, 11:00 AM

As long as he doesn't have court orders you don't need to let him see her,
IF he does go for any custody/visitations you make sure you go to the court hearing and tell the Judge your concerns and that you feel supervised visits would be better. If you give the Judge good enough reasons he might go for supervised.
Also get a Protection From Abuse papers and if the Judge does grant him visits then you need to have a family member do the exchanges in a public safe place.

GirlWSlingshot · Jan 23, 2009, 11:27 AM

Has his paternity been established? If not, and if there are not currently any court orders for visitation and custody, I believe (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) he doesn't actually have any parental rights established at this time. So he has no legal right to visitation if his paternity has not been established or a court has not ordered visitation.

What state are you in?

vehelh · Jan 23, 2009, 12:58 PM

He lives in Georgia and I live in Missouri. His name is on the because but that's it. And no there is no court orders for anything.

GirlWSlingshot · Jan 23, 2009, 02:07 PM

So he signed the birth certificate in Missouri when you had the baby?

cdad · Jan 23, 2009, 04:52 PM

He may not be the legal father at this point. You need to check with a lawyer on that. You were still married. You didn't even file any papers so the presumed father is your husband. The only difficut thing is his name is on the birth certificate. You need to find out what the true legal status of the child is because he may not have any rights at all.

vehelh · Jan 24, 2009, 12:12 AM

He signed the because in Georgia where the baby was born.

cadillac59 · Jan 25, 2009, 11:37 AM

Originally Posted by vehelh

he signed the bc in georgia where the baby was born.

You need to check with a GA attorney on this. If this were a California case I could give you a detailed and definitive answer.

My hunch is the baby's dad has a presumption of paternity in GA already because he is on the birth certificate and probably signed a declaration of paternity at the time of the birth of the child (in California being on the because would indicate having signed a declaration of paternity and would mean this guy is the legal father). Second, the dad lived with the child for a while and held the child out as his own and that alone in many states creates a presumption of paternity. So, yes, the dad has parental rights and would probably be ajudged the legal father if the matter proceeded to court. So check it out with a GA attorney.

The fact that you were still married when the child was born would create a presumption that your husband were the father, but you were separated from him at the time and he is not the bio-dad. Sounds like he'd be the loser in any parentage dispute. Again, check with a good GA family law attorney.