J
joesmama
Guest
Good evening. I am the custodial parent of my child.The father and I were never married. My son and I live in Arizona and the father chooses to live in California. He and I are amicable with each other most of the time. The father of our child is a bartender, yet claims unemployment as far as I know. He has and may still be avoiding paying his taxes. He insisted on having a genetic test done to prove him the father of our child. The results of course were 99.9% definate. He did not show at our court date to establish child support and therefore was concluded as a default. He clearly stated that he would not be paying me child support through the system because he didn't want to get an audit or have the government involved in his life in any way. He has been involved in illegal activities in the past and I believe he still is. He said he would take me to court to lower his monthly child support payments if I continued to pursue him. He said I was backing him into a corner because he had to protect himself from getting an audit. He also said I was going to make him loose his job because his employer who employs him under the table was getting "harrassed" by child support enforcement. He agreed to pay me if I didn't involve the system. He said he'd pay me a full year up front, and he'd pay me more than what the court was asking him to pay. I reluctantly agreed. I wrote up a specific verbal agreement and it has been notarized. He is visiting our child about every 5-6 weeks so far. He has threatened me before about seeking custody of our child when I was going to move out of state to Florida. I never did because I was pregnant and intimidated by his threat. (I broke up with him after an unhealthy 6 year relationship and was going to move with my family to Florida. I found out after we broke up that I was pregnant with our child about 2 weeks later.) Almost 2 years have gone by now and my family, whom I've been living with since I found out I was pregnant, are moving to Virginia. I am somewhat dependant right now on my mothers home. I work at home to be with my child and live with my Mother because my home job does not pay well enough to afford our own place. This is to be a temporary situation for the first year of my child's life. Back to the point, an unexpected opportunity has presented itself to my mother through her work. She may be taking advantage of this and moving to Virginia. I would love to go with her for the purpose of staying close to my family, and to get out of Arizona which I have never liked. My one and only concern holding me back is the father of my child. I do not know what sort of rights he has if he decides to get angry with this decision, which I'm sure he will. He does love our child and enjoy visits with him. I appreciate that and don't want to take that away from him however, I would also like to move on with my life and do what I believe will work for myself and my son. I, in a way, don't have much of a choice, as this move would happen rather quickly - (October of this year)and I'm not working a high paying enough job to move into our own place if I wanted to at the moment. I am quite capable of getting a very decent job in any event. I choose to stay home with my child to offer him proper care in exchange for our current living situation. I am mainly outlining my situation (in short?!) so you are able to have a better idea how to answer this question. The question basically is: Am I entitled to move with our child where I see fit and does the father have any rights to custody over me if we were to go to court regarding that issue. I hate that I am controlled by him still after I have removed myself from that relationship. Please advise if you can. Thank you in advance.
