{"id":800,"date":"2011-05-17T11:00:50","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T15:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/?p=800"},"modified":"2011-05-17T12:51:15","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T16:51:15","slug":"splitsville-why-i-never-took-my-daughters-father-to-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/splitsville-why-i-never-took-my-daughters-father-to-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Splitsville: Why I Never Took My Daughter’s Father To Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/em>It was 2 o’clock in the morning and I had been in the hospital for 7 hours so far.\u00a0My labor had been pretty easy. I was getting ready to push.\u00a0Within the hour, I would have my beautiful daughter Brenna to hold.\u00a0Before I started pushing, I grabbed one of my pillows, chucked it across the room and screamed, “Someone get that piece of shit out of my room!”<\/p>\n

My daughter’s father had been asleep on the couch in my hospital room for hours. He couldn’t be bothered to wake up and hold me through my epidural. He didn’t bat an eye when my mother tried to inform him that my water had broke.\u00a0I was so furious with him that I just wanted him gone. In the end, my mother and sister were\u00a0with me\u00a0through\u00a0the delivery.<\/p>\n

After our daughter was born, her father was the one who contacted everyone to tell them the good news.\u00a0He gushed to his family about our beautiful daughter.\u00a0He smoked cigars with all the friends who came to visit us\u00a0in the hospital.\u00a0He shared the story of labor that he hadn’t actually witnessed. He was thrilled with the birth of our daughter and he told everyone he could how magical that birth, the one he missed, was.\u00a0Needless to say, our relationship didn’t last far beyond the delivery room.<\/p>\n

I’m sharing this story because it was very indicative of the type of parent my daughter’s father\u00a0would become. He talks a lot about fatherhood and how important it is, but he rarely steps up to do the actual parenting. He makes a lot of big promises that he doesn’t often deliver on. In his mind, he’s a father.\u00a0In his actions, he’s an uncle who pops up once a month to spend a couple hours with his favorite niece.<\/p>\n

When we first broke up, I was a struggling, single\u00a0 mother. I didn’t have the money to hire an attorney and go through the proper procedure.\u00a0My daughter’s father was paying me support on a fairly regular basis.\u00a0Even better, he was so busy with his own life that he rarely bothered me.\u00a0As the years have gone by, he’s less frequent with both the support and the visitation.<\/p>\n

I realize that this is sad for my daughter.\u00a0I honestly wish that she could have a closer relationship with her father. But at the same time, she has an amazing and loving family who care about her.\u00a0She has a stepfather who thinks of her as his own. My husband’s family has embraced her with open arms. It helps that she’s the only female grandchild in a sea of boys.\u00a0My daughter is a loved child.<\/p>\n

I never took my daughter’s father to court. I never established\u00a0a visitation schedule.\u00a0Or support.\u00a0I spoke with a lawyer and as it stands, I’m her sole legal and physical guardian.\u00a0I may not be guaranteed money, but I don’t have to ask her father’s opinion on what pre-school I sign her up for.\u00a0I don’t have to check and see what his holiday schedule looks like.\u00a0I normally do ask him these things out of courtesy, but the decisions are mine to make.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, my daughter and her father have exactly the relationship he wants them to. He’s not forced to see her every other weekend or keep her overnight. I’m not forced to consider the opinion of a man who doesn’t know the size of my daughter’s shoes or her favorite food or what stuffed animal she needs to fall asleep. In his mind, this man is a father.\u00a0So in a black-and-white court system, he would never give up his parental rights. He would say, “Of course I’m her dad.\u00a0 Of course I want joint custody.” But in real life, where actions matter more than labels, I get to have sole custody. With no lawyer fees or court dates, I got the exact outcome I wanted.<\/p>\n

Maybe someday I’ll change my mind.\u00a0Maybe someday her father will decide that he wants to be a bigger part of her life.\u00a0I’ll welcome that decision, if he actually plans on following through with it. But until then, I’m happy that we never went to court to establish a relationship that doesn’t exist.<\/p>\n

(Photo: Thinkstock)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to Splitsville. This weekly column will focus on parenting after a divorce, break-up or one-night stand that didn\u2019t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20795,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[113,16,75],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":6,"label":"Stuff"}],"post_tag":[{"value":113,"label":"Child Custody"},{"value":16,"label":"parenting"},{"value":75,"label":"single mom"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Lindsay Cross","author_link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/author\/lcross\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":6,"name":"Stuff","slug":"stuff","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":6,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":8931,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":6,"category_count":8931,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Stuff","category_nicename":"stuff","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":113,"name":"Child Custody","slug":"child-custody","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":113,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":19,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":16,"name":"parenting","slug":"parenting","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":16,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1332,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":75,"name":"single mom","slug":"single-mom","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":75,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":62,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20795"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}