Divorce Support Forums: Some questions about CS

I've never heard fo a judge ordering support from a step-parent who was known since day one to not be the parent fo the child, and who never adopted teh child. Are you under orders to pay or are you just doing this voluntarily? If it's voluntary, I'd suggest you stop, because you're not doing yourself any favors by setting this precedent.

Generally, the step-parents have no rights to see the stepchildren after a divorce, in the U.S.

That does not mean there is no moral obligation, no feeling of need to provide, no parental feelings... it simply means that where there are no biological ties, the court will not force the biological parent to allow the child to see the non-bio parent, and will not require the non-bio parent to pay for the child... in the U.S., it's even been termed a form of fraud for a mother to try to claim that a man is the bio father in order to force him to pay for support, when she knowsn darned well that he is NOT the father. AND, in nearly every case where a woman asks for support, the man is allowed to enter in and demand a DNA test to make certain the kid really is his before paying... there are some infamous exceptions, rare situations where the men did NOT bother to contest the parentage of the child at the apropriate time, and therefore ended up being ordered to pay, and at some time LATER, they found out that they weren't really the biological father & weren't able to get the courts to change the decision ordering them to pay... it seems most of the reasoning in those rare situations is one of two things... first, that SOMEONE needs to pay for the kid and if he'd been doing it so far without complaint he had no right to complain now, because his chance to challenge parentage was well past... and second, that he set a precedent, has a moral obligation and never challenged it, so there is a pattern of him paying and to stop payments at this point would be morally offensive...

It's this second reason that I worry about with you... that by paying without challenging it, you are setting a precedent and teh Canadian courts might just insist that you CONTINUE to pay, even while not requiring the child's mother to have the child maintain any kind of personal relationship with you... at which point you become a virtual stranger paying for someone else's mistake...

To prevent this, you need to follow the legal opportunities that you have to get the paperwork straight, challenge this, etc...

You said you are separated. Have you filed for divorce? Is there a formal separation agreement? Is your support designated as child support or alimony? How long was the marriage and would alimony be appropriate? What kind of work does your ex do? What kind of work do you do? (And how muchh do each of you earn) Are there ANY formal court orders or is all this being done voluntarily because you thought it was the right thing to do and never questioned whetheer or not you or the biological fatehr was the one who really shoudl be paying that obligation? And if you do have a court order requiring you to pay, WHY IN THE WORLD did you not challenge it at the time they gave the order?

Truly, this sounds like one of those situations where people split and don't finish or pay attention to the paperwork fo the split, not filing papers, not filing responses, not challenging the things they need to challenge in their response so that the ISSUE of whether or not she's your biological child si not even considered in the court...

Your current situation is one of those which points as a lesson to the rest of us... to PAY ATTENTION to the legal paperwork of our lives... FINALIZE things, and take the steps needed to get from point A (married & together) to point B (divorced, certain & final, with all property and obligatiosn properly and fairly resolved)... becasue if you don't pay attention, you might end up paying somethign more than it would seem fair to pay.