NOT being the bioligal parent does NOT mean one can't and won't still have a relationship with their child - our child is not our biological child, and it matters not. S
However, we had the right to an informed decision to adopt our daughter. We had the right to CHOOSE to assume parental responsibility for a child that was not biologically ours. Our child had the right to have the truth of our NOT being her bioparents known to her.
I find it abhorant that we give women who lie and dupe someone into paternity a "free pass" ssimply because they managed to get away with it long enough. There SHOULD be consequences, and dire ones, for a person who perpetrates a fraud such as lying about paternity. Holding mom financially accountable should in no way mean that this dad and daughter can't still have a relationship. Heck, she's almost an adult and will soon have the right to see or not see whomever she wishes. She, too, was duped, and should be entitled to recourse.
BB, I just really have a problem with the idea that a woman can just dupe a child and parent, and if she gets away with it long enough, we treat DAD as the "bad" guy for feeling she should be accountable for making fraudulant representations. Maybe if more women got dinged legally for pulling this crap, fewer women would cheat their child this way.
If a person is going to raise a child who is not theirs biologically as their own, they should need to go through the adoption process, same as we did. Not be cheated into it.
IT is ironic that adoptee rights groups spend so much time and energy to make their birth records available, because they feel that every child should have the right to at least know their medical roots, yet family law allows far MORE children to be cheated out of knowledge of who their biofather actually is by the way they assign, then refuse to correct, inaccurate bioparentage on a birth certificate..