Is a “barely there” father better than none at all? I’d say it’s much, much better if a non-existent “dad” just completely took himself out of the picture as opposed to only being around like a distant uncle. It only sends mixed messages to his child and when that child has another male role model in his life who truly is always there, what good does it do to have deadbeat in the picture at all? Yes, I’m talking about me here...My wife went to court six months ago (at the urging of myself and our circle of friends) because deadbeat wasn’t paying child support. The settlement was for $125 per week plus all medical benefits provided for their five year old son. The details of the agreement stipulated that his father would get to see him every weekend and on assigned holidays. That was six months ago. In the past six months I can barely count on two hands how many times he’s seen him. In the beginning, he stuck to the terms and was seeing his son every week. That fizzled out little by little. Ok. At one point his son got to the point where he just didn’t want to even go see him because he felt so uncomfortable. Mainly it was because the visits were of no substance and were spent in the home of his very cold grandmother (yes his father lives with her and doesn’t take his son out anywhere on the rare occasions he’d pick him up). He expresses no level of missing his father, at least not in the way he misses his mother (he asks me after school over and over what time she’s coming home from work because he misses her everyday). His father went five weeks without seeing him and then calls on Thanksgiving morning expecting to pick him up! My wife refused based on the fact that he hadn’t arranged this with her courteously a day in advance and we preceded with our holiday plans. The father blamed her for not “allowing” him to see his son that day, and also subtly blamed her for the prior five weeks. See, my wife told him she didn’t want to be the “go between,” meaning the one to convince her son to go see him and would remain neutral if their son shows displeasure in going. The father took that as him feeling that he has to ask his son directly if he can pick him up as opposed to going directly to my wife to arrange the plans like a normal adult would. So he contends that since he couldn’t finalize plans with his 5 year old, he was somehow being prevented from seeing him. Not to mention the health insurance documents are still yet to be provided in six months so the boy is on my wife’s coverage and we have to pay out of pocket for things her plan doesn’t cover.

Secondly, my wife’s lawyer advised she seek a child support increase after six months and she refuses to even consider it. I’m not money hungry and would prefer no money at all from this guy to not deal with the aggravation, but is she not being taken advantage of by not at least exploring the possibility of getting more money from him? She’s certainly getting walked all over by not getting the health documents and by feeling the need to be the person who is responsible for building the relationship between the boy and his father (when his father is the one that let it become distanced at no fault of my wife.) Yet she still feels guilty for breaking up with him and rationalizes his behavior. It’s one excuse after another and I’m stuck here feeling like a dope being this boy’s father figure 24/7 when this deadbeat can do whatever he wants whenever he wants and that’s perfectly ok. Why? Because he’s biologically the kid’s father? How is that fair? By me being my wife’s husband and the boy’s stepfather don’t I have a right to state my opinion (and hope my wife takes action), especially if it directly is implicating my life with my family? He didn’t even call the kid on the morning of his first day of kindergarten. He wasn’t there at the doctor’s office when he went for his last checkup. I was there. I know he won’t be there for his son’s kindergarten graduation and who knows how many other milestones. But it’s fine for him to expect to take him away from us on Christmas? I think maybe my wife may still have a soft spot for her ex, I mean I can’t imagine any other reason why she’d allow this type of behavior to take place. I don’t get why she went to court if none of the agreement is going to be held up. The way my wife is, she will uphold her end of the bargain and let her son go over there on Christmas even though I can guarantee the father won’t make any effort to see him between now and then. Why should she uphold her end of the agreement if he’s not going to uphold his? My wife tells me she likes everything the way it is and that she doesn’t want her son going over there every weekend anyway. Fine. But the point is it’s in the legal document that he’s supposed to go there and it’s the principle of the thing. Just like yes her son is on her health coverage so he’s not suffering but her ex is responsible to provide that. I know if she played a little hardball and took him back to court and tried to get more money and showed how he has not given the health insurance or visited with his son faithfully every weekend as he’s supposed to the father will just get fed up and sign his rights away. But she’s worried that she’ll lose her son and her ex will be vindictive and try to go for custody. I told her she is the one who has been doing everything RIGHT the past six months and he’s been doing everything WRONG so no judge would allow that. He hasn’t done anything good in the past six months so to me that means he’s used up his one last shot here and will never change. I assured her that she has nothing to lose and at best, he’d finally be out of all our lives forever. If I had any doubts in my mind that we’d lose this boy to this deadbeat I wouldn’t be pushing for this. He’s been a deadbeat for a year now as I’ve explained in my rants six months ago if any of you recall. But back then my wife and I both agreed that it was not her place at that time to try and get her lawyer to have him give up his custodial rights. She wanted to give him another shot to be a dad. She did. He blew it. She told me that she’d see how the next six months panned out and here we are now and I feel like she’s being a bit hypocritical by allowing this type of stuff to go on.

She still wants her son to have a relationship with his father yet she doesn’t want him to visit there more often to build that relationship. I brought this issue up to her the other night and it became a big fight and I don’t want to have this issue divide us. She says things to me like things were “not that bad” when she was with her ex and I sense she has regrets (especially when she says things like “I broke up her family.”) Well, at the time she felt it was the right thing to do ending her relationship with him and even if her ex’s relationship with their son was rock solid when they were all united, it’s only HIS duty to maintain a bond with is kid. Why is he not held accountable? I don’t care if I hated my ex’s guts, I’d never neglect my child like this man is doing! Anyway, after our disagreement, I agreed again to not say anything further and let time take it’s course. She said she’ll think about my playing hardball strategy after the holiday season. In the meantime, he went over to his father’s on his birthday two nights ago for a 2 hour visit. 2 hours in the past five weeks. Now the past two nights the boy has woken up in the middle of the night crying. This is after a long hard road of making him comfortable in his bed after a period of restless nights. I don’t think this is a coincidence and I know it’s because of the instability with this ongoing situation. I’m trying to build a stable, comfortable environment here in our home and I feel like any involvement from my wife’s ex is not only an intrusion but a detriment. But God forbid I bring that up I’d be starting more drama. How long do I sit on my hands here and keep my mouth shut? How many milestones in his son’s life are going to come and go with no involvement from his father? Do we really have to wait for the boy to become a teenager to decide for himself that his father wants nothing to do with him or should we not at this time be doing everything we can with our lawyer with the hopes that he will finally just leave us alone? To complicate matters even more, my wife is pregnant and is admittedly extra emotional lately and I want this totally resolved when the baby comes along in July.

A sidebar issue: I haven’t posted on here in a long time because my wife and I made an agreement to talk about things amongst ourselves and not seek advice from message boards. But I have come to find out she’s posting things on a message board with regards to our relationship which hurt me and has made me now even more confused. I feel real sad over all this and I only want to feel joy this holiday season.