custody rights for unmarried father

What is the name of your state? Ohio

my brother got his girlfriend pregnant (she was "on the pill") 1 year and nine months ago. he is a wonderful father to a beautiful one year old boy and has been a wonderful father since the day his son was born. they have lived with her parents since they are both still in college. her parents have recently kicked him out of their home because he has not proposed marriage to her yet. My question is, what are his rights as an unmarried father of a son that he has helped taken care of since day one?

Has paternity been legally established? If not, he will first need to do that.

Second, he will need to file for either joint physical custody or visitation. A court order will establish his legal right to see his child. He should expect to see an order for CS filed by the mom.

thank you for the information. could her parents cut him out of the picture just to be vindictive or does he have more rights than her parents?

I am hoping they were both "of age".

IF he gets a court order, the Girlfriend can be found in contempt for not complying. HE may wish to establish the exchange of custody for "his time" at a neutral local, or that she must bring the child out to him. He will want to have a car seat and crib at his place, wherever that turns out to be, so his child can can travel safely there and sleep at his place. He may want to also try, from the get-go, to limit move-aways in the future, so she doesn't take off and move across the country with his child. HE should go for the most he can get, at least every other weekend and an overnight during the week- if he doesn't do so now, it may be harder to get in the future. He should only do this if he is capable of being available to properly care for and attend to his child. Where are his parents and yourself? Can you help out?

If he thinks visitation AT HER PARENTS is going to work, he is likely mistaken. He needs his own visitation time, AWAY from her parents.

I agree

And I think that there may not be too much opposition from the judge, IF he brings up in court, that the parents are being hostile towards him, that would go along against the best interests of the child. However, all this is based on his character, and if the local DSS would find that he wouldn't make a good parent.

My daughter is 17, she has a child by a guy that is 26, she is still in H.S, He had a job, I was watching the child while she was in school, and he was working, he lost his job, she still goes to school, so i quit watching the child until he got another job, well know he is using the child as a reason not to get a job, he is trying to establish himself as the primary caregiver of the child, he lives at home with his mother, my daughter lives with me, he is trying to get assistance from welfare, he does not need to do that
all he needs is a job, I stay at home and am willing to take care of the child. He gets mad and states he will get custody, blah blah , blah. So what am I to do to help my daughter who is still a minor? She has rights also.

nextwife- he lives several hours away from me and my parents but he just moved into his own apartment and he goes and picks up his son three times a week and has him all day and one overnight. He and his girlfriend are both over 21. However, his girlfriends parents will not allow their daughter to speak to my brother until he proposes to her. they are hell bent on them getting married and yes, sandmann, his girlfriends father has been very hostile towards my brother. my brother just doesn't want to get married yet and i can't blame him. he wants to finish school so he can get a good job to be able to better take care of his son and perhaps his girlfriend if her parents would just back off.

Thank you again for your advice. I really appreciate it!

Good luck to him. Finishing school IS the best LONG-TERM plan for his child's future. If her parents would just back off, they may even have the possibility of being together in the future.

Anyway, legally, she is of age, this is between your brother and his girlfriend. They have no legal standing. He needs to establish his legal visitation days and times. That way, he need not talk to them to set anything up, it will be known in advance that he gets this child on these days at these times. He may want to even see about a prepaid cel phone to provide her that is preprogrammed ONLY for communication between he and GF, so that child related conversations do NOT go through the grandparents phone. He should keep in mind that these are his child's grandparents and they will be in his life,like it or not, for the rest of his life, so he should try to avoid confrontational situations.

My brother and his wife dated each other from age 16, and then married after they both graduated college, at age 22 (they are two weeks apart in age). It was a good plan, they are still married 24 years later, and their eldest is a college sophmore on three scholarships. Of course, they waited several years after marriage to start a family, but the important thing is that they both got college degrees, and my brother went on and got two post grad degrees. They have a nice life BECAUSE they made sure about their education.

Tell him

tell him to go to court. The parents can not stop your brother from seeing his daughter. He needs to get it ordered and this way he can take the cops with him, if need be. Tell the GF to stand up to her parents, that is her child and not theirs. It is time to step up and act like parents and not cave in because someone is being mean.

Tell your brother to grow some b**** and do what is right for this child and it is not allowing people to push him out of his childs life.

nextwife-the things that you say are what I have felt since this began. It is my brother and his girlfriend's child not her parents child. I just wish they would see the big picture instead of the fact that their daughter is unmarried with a child. so is my brother, but they are being very unreasonable.

Knowing the facts makes me feel better. i wanted to make sure that his rights as a father are protected and that her family can't get away with being smarmy. someone had told me that in ohio, the father has no rights, regardless of the situation, and in court the mother has to grant the father any rights whatsoever. that didn't sound good to me.

I'll pass this on to my brother. Knowledge is power.

Thanks again. I'll keep you posted. Congrats to your brother and his wife. I should mail that to her parents.

dakoto70-

not caving in because someone is being mean is good advice. Thank you. I've used that already today.

Grateful Granny - you'd be best off starting a new thread for your question. You'll find you get more responses, and it's considered poor netiquette to hijack someone else's thread. Just a tip.

Sorry Stealth2, I am knew to this, I did post my own thread, I apoligize to unmarried father, I had no intention on infringing on your space. Thanks for the Tip!

Sarah7000 -

Why isn't your brother going to marry this girl? If he doesn't want to marry her, he should have kept it in his pants. Not to be terse, but it sounds like marriage is out of the question.

If he wants to be a big part of the childs life, he better act now, before the child is old enough to know that he is permanently "not there".

I mean, does he want visitation only, or split custody? Tell him to become a man, and split custody, even if he is in school. Once the child is older, and does not have a full time father around, well, then it's too late to do much from there.

Am I right? No marriage?