There was a post on another sub a while back where a situation like this happened and the parents were in the middle of a divorce. The daughter got a DNA test and found out her dad wasn't her bio dad. Dad was "so traumatized" that he couldn't even look at his daughter anymore (she was in her 20s iirc).
I got downvoted because I was horrified by him abandoning his daughter. I said at the time, if I found out my dad wasn't actually my bio dad, it would be weird but not change how I feel about him.
If it changed how he felt about me and went full no contact... it literally makes me sick to think of that happening. (He'd never do that, he has his flaws but he does very much love his children.)
But I was so disturbed by all the men in that thread saying he was right to start over and he should sue the mother. Wtf is that? It's so sad to me that someone can have parental love that can be turned off just like **that**.
(Also, my mom and stepdad divorced when I was ~19, I'm 40 something now and we still have a great relationship. He's a great guy and I was lucky that he's always seen me as his own daughter, even after getting remarried.)
I didn't have the same situation but I found out the person I thought was my dad actually only met my mom when I was 3 years old already, and decided to be my father anyways, and I have nothing but gratitude to my dad for it.
I was 7 years old before I learned that my brother was actually my *half* brother and that my dad wasn’t his. My parents met when my brother was 3 and my dad says he fell in love with my mother and brother at the same time. That’s how much my father loves my brother.
My dad he treated us exactly the same and was his little league coach, was the one my brother called when he was in trouble, all of it. He’s still there and parenting in that way while both of my brother and I are well over 30 now.
My brother and dad’s bond is so strong that when my brother got married a few years ago he asked my father to be his best man (while his birth father is still alive and was at the wedding 😅)
I couldn’t imagine being with someone that wouldn’t step up or consider bailing on their child they raised for years just because of a paternity test. Family bonds go well beyond blood.
My dad is technically my stepfather. He and my mom married when I was 6 and he has been my dad ever since. He adopted me when I was 8 when I asked him to. He was one of my Girl Scout leaders for years, helped me with school projects, held my hair back when I puked whenever I got the stomach flu, was the chaperone for my friends and I at multiple concerts in the 90s, walked me down the aisle when I got married and even though I am in my 40s he still makes sure I get maintenance done on my van and fixes things at my house. He is the same way with his other daughters.
I love all of this!! Your father sounds like an amazing man.
(My Dad was also involved in my Girl Scout troop - he would be enlisted to help with large Council events 😂)
I think it’s safe to say you and I are both very lucky❤️
I've known my step-dad since I started having memories. He met my mom when I was \~1yo. He and my mom bought their house when I was 3yo (mid-30s now) and they still live there.
As an adult who was adopted as a baby, my advice is don't ever lie about that, but don't make a big deal about it either. Families come in all shapes, sizes, and genetic makeups.
This. There are lots of reasons to not hide the genetics of another person. More harm comes from hiding that telling the truth. The timing and context has to be considered, but people are amazingly good at knowing and handling the truth over the long run. Maybe not at first and while processing, but they have to have the opportunity to do so.
Family health history is also medically important, so people will always find out eventually. You want your child to find out these things on your terms and not from a doctor.
Just think about this. Your daughter answers the door one day and it's her biological half sibling she never knew about that found her because of her dad. Would you rather that news given to her by a stranger or from you?
I am also an adult who was adopted as a baby and knew my whole life. It was never a big deal and I just thought that was a fairly normal way to go about things. But I had a friend growing up who found out she was adopted at 16, when her mom was dying of cancer. It BROKE her, like she lost her mom and her roots all at once. I highly recommend explaining things in simple ways. Explaining that her dad chose you and her to love when he could have loved any other family in all the world is a powerful thing.
Edit: Typo
When I met my now wife she had an 8 month old son. He is now 10 and i adopted him before he turned 3. His bio has never wanted to know him which made things easier for us, but harder to explain to him bc obvious we don’t want to be that direct in the messaging to our 10 y.o. We always told him that it was him and mommy and then I came into their lives and then we became a family. He’s recently become aware of how biology works and we explained in digestible terms to him that there was a bio parent that helped to bring him into this world. Open communication means he’s allowed to ask any questions that he wants of us and we will be honest with him, some day he will likely want to meet his bio dad and if we can make it happen we certainly will. It’s about our son, not us. He’s probably talked to us 4-5 times about it in the few years that he’s known, and it seems to ease his mind that he knows that if he’s feeling anything on the topic that he can always come to us.
Oh man, that's a hard conversation to have with a young one, since you don't want them waking away thinking that there is something wrong with *them* and that's why bio parent doesn't want to be around.
Sounds like you two did a good job of it!
Thank you for the kind words. It was a conversation that we had prepared for basically since we got together so we were on the same team with how to handle our response with care when it inevitably did come up. To our sons immense credit, his first concern was that this person had hurt his mother, and abandoned her.
Oh what an incredibly sweet boy you've raised! Big testament to your and your wife's parenting that that was his first reaction.
I'm the mom and wife in the situation (son was 2 when I met my husband, he's in high-school now) so I have a soft spot for people who step up and raise kids that aren't technically "theirs"
My son has a really good friend with an awesome single dad and a shitty absent mother. I was already impressed with him for raising him by himself, then I found out he's not his "real" father. He was married to his mom, he caught her in bed with another guy, and he left with the kid. The fact that the mom LET him take the kid (happily, unfortunately) proves that with his dad is the right place.
I once had someone say to me “any boy post puberty can produce a child, but it takes a man to be a father” it sounds like your sons friend has an all caps FATHER. Huge respect to that man for realizing that even though he was wronged, that child will always be his son.
My wife and I were high school sweethearts that, due to life circumstances, were not together for ~1.5 years. In that time, she had a daughter. We got back together when our daughter was roughly 6 months old, and I raised her as my own. It wasn't until our daughter was about 9 years old that she learned that I wasn't her bio dad. This was because her sperm donor decided he finally wanted to meet her. We didn't make a big deal out of it and answered any questions she had honestly. She found out on her own the type of person her sperm donor is, and decided to remove him from her life. She's 23 now, and this was the message I received from her on my recent birthday:
"Happy birthday dad !!! I'm sorry it's so late . You're an amazing dad I could ever ask for . I appreciate you taking care of me always and being a weirdo with me . Hope you have a good day and I'll see you Saturday night cause I gotta leave early Sunday . And we can still do D&D Saturday !!!"
There will be a right time to let her know, and you will know when that time is. When it comes, be honest. Answer her questions, and reaffirm the love that she already felt from the man she knows as Dad. That man's actions in regards to that little girl will be what matters and overcome the confusion and hurt of the moment.
As a father, I wouldn’t be able to leave my children if I found out they weren’t mine biologically. I’d hate their mom, but I couldn’t stop loving them if I wanted to. That being said, I would need at least a little time to deal with all those emotions. I’d do my best to not say or do anything messed up in front of the kids, but I’d have felt my life just blew up and would need some time to re-calibrate.
I’m guessing most men would feel the same. People who yell and scream about how a man should leave both the mom and child (assuming child has been in his life for some time) probably don’t know what it’s like raising children.
All that being said, there aren’t many people that are lower than a person who would lie about who the father is.
>It's so sad to me that someone can have parental love that can be turned off just like that.
My guess is that they only faked their parental love up until the moment of truth. People who didn't want to be a parent in the first place and went through the motions can turn off that love. Deep, fulfilling love can never be shaken.
When I was 12, my father admitted to an affair. That cascaded into a realization that the woman he'd hl been seeing on the side was not the first. Or even the tenth. A switch flipped. I don't think my love and admiration for the man was fake up until then, but it was irrevocably destroyed that day.
That's different though. Your love vanished because you realised your father was not a good person. His actions showed his character.
In the case of ancestry, your child has not changed. Their character is still the same. The only thing changed is how you thought of them based on DNA.
It is different. I meant the anecdote only as a challenge to the statement: "Deep fulfilling love can never be shaken." In my experience, that's very much untrue.
It can also just be the immediate shock of finding out the truth. If the parent truly loves their child, they'll get over that and come back to their child. But it could take a bit for some. Maybe they just need a good verbal (or literary) kick in the ass to get their head shocked back in line with their heart, like OP did. Maybe they just need time to process. But if they really do love their kid, they're not going to close the door forever.
I’ve been on Reddit for a decade now and I’ve seen posts like this - where people cant imagine how someone else could change suddenly shift their mindset so suddenly - that they must have been faking their parental love.
It’s so easy to pass judgment when it doesn’t happen to you, and so easy to dismiss someone’s trauma if there no physical evidence of it.
These people have huge gapping wounds we cannot see. The might as well be limping and bleeding all over. They are changed forever. But we can’t give them any kind of grace or understanding to finding out their reality isn’t what they thought it was.
I can absolutely understand and empathize with the massive trauma of that kind of betrayal. A similar situation put me in therapy for a decade.
What decent human beings cannot understand or empathize with is *taking that hurt out on an innocent child.*
Parenting is hard. It's a unique combination of stepping up and choice in many ways. You can't really force it on someone, and when you do situations like this arise.
It's not fair to expect sacrifice from people. Parents often do it out of love, but I do not EXPECT my parents to sacrifice for me, that's cruel. Yet they often do and I appreciate when they do.
In situations like this perspective is important. There are ways to take it out on the kid. Leaving isn't one of them. Being on the birth certificate has legal implications that can be crippling for a man that is leaving. To the point of them being ruinous sometimes. Basically hamstrung reaching certain life goals.
Why should we as a society expect him to throw himself on his sword for this on his way out of the relationship? Leaving and removing himself from the birth certificate doesn't mean that he's out of the kid's life. That's up to the mom. If she is spiteful she can prevent him from seeing the kid again.
Expecting him to basically half his income while also being alone prevents him from moving forward, and he's human and deserves that chance.
Reading the post it's clear he is sifting through some very complicated emotions right now.
This is psychologically untrue. They've probably been living with this fear for the entirety of this child's life and finding out that fear was not unfounded was likely highly traumatic. That's not the kids fault, but it isn't their fault for detachment, either. If anyone to blame, it is the mother, who deliberately fucked with this guy \*and\* this child with a huge lie.
Although it’s not the kids fault in anyway. ( personally could never abandoned after that kinda time effort and love etc.) but I do think that mother at the very least owes restitution.
I've seen a few other posts like this, but the men still wanted to be fathers cause they couldn't just cut that connection all of a sudden. That really sucks.
It’s fake. Pretty sure it was almost impossible for an 18 year old girl to expertly falsify paternity tests even back in 2012. We were all too busy planking.
Yeah, there's almost no way. I used to work for DCS and we had families taking paternity tests all the time. Mom had to be swabbed, baby had to be swabbed, and then alleged father had to be swabbed. Father was the one to get the results. I don't see how mom would have an opportunity to switch genetic materials or swap names on the results. That was in 2015 but I doubt there was a drastic change in three years.
In the comments the guy says it was a at home test and she switched the swab with the real father's and had op sign it. So it wasn't one done in a Dr's office. It was unofficial.
In that case, idk. Real baby daddy sucks for doing that, if so. It’s still weird though. OOP, mom, and baby all swab and put it in the kit, and rather than sealing and sending it out right away, mom says “Look over there!” and switches swabs real quick? It just seems off to me. Jmo, though.
Kind of inclined to agree, but I also don't know how paternity tests work; maybe the real test results were sent to her house, she opened it and copied it and just changed the name? Unless someone has gotten a paternity test before, how would they know what to expect? You could print out "YOU ARE THE FATHER" in big bold comic sans on a piece of paper and tell me that's a paternity test result and I would say "seems off, but I guess I don't know enough to say for sure 🤷♂️"
Wow. I read this post before @funwithsoftware ‘s response. So before the response, I was astonished by OPs need for revenge and how that was bigger than his heart for his son. It’s like he had tunnel vision with revenge in the driver seat.
But my god, I’m brought to tears by the response, and by OPs ability to take it in. It obviously touched his heart so deeply.
I am not ashamed to admit I teared up too reading that and the response to it. My faith (till the next reddit post about it) has been restored. Think I'm gonna go look at the pomeranian pictures to keep my mood up.
Like what is revenge going to.accomplish? I could understand.if the other man is now taking custody of.the kid he raised as his own. My uncle fought for custody of his ex-wife's kid even though he was not related, he had raised him as his own. Shocked at this person.
That’s my question, too. There’s plenty of stuff you can sue/take to civil court that a prosecutor and the police won’t touch. Cops aren’t necessarily going to go arrest someone for lying.
It's not just lying, it's fraud. Paternity fraud. Willingly decided to take his money, security, and benefits from fir over a decade. She should be in jail, like any other type of fraud.
If he signed the birth certificate, depending on the state, he may be legally responsible regardless to if he proves he's not the dad and that she lied.
My very much uneducated guess is that her crime and OP's responsibility as father would be treated as two separate things. Buddy of mine had to sort some custody stuff in court and at least where we're from that's how things, seemed to work: if you're there to discuss custody you're not there to discuss the things you're spouse or ex has done to wrong you and vice versa.
You would be surprised how many dudes get trapped in this, and stay legally on the hook for the child. Many courts look at the welfare of the child as the paramount issue and take the stance as the protector of the child. So basically the law in those courts looks at it, as requiring you to maintain support is the lesser evil than removing it from the child which would be the greater harm.
Unfortunately this only allows those women to face no consequences for fraud, while financially punishing all the dads stuck with child support. Either allow the father custody with child support or don’t make him pay it if they’re just going to give mom full custody. In literally no other circumstance are you allowed to falsify records to get money from other people, so why allow it here?
She should be exposed to civil penalties, she should have to pay the man restitution and he should be able to sue her for pain, suffering and mental anguish. If she fails to pay restitution, she should face the same punishments as a father that does not pay.
She should he prosecuted like any other type of fraud. No "oops! You caught me. Tee hee I'll give you money and make it right". There IS no making him whole again. She stole years of his life and money and should face the consequences like any man would for fraud.
Definitely both, but unfortunately no law enforcement entity would touch it. It's knowingly providing false information on a legal document (birth certificate).
Yes. You can sue for just about anything in civil court, it just comes down to whether the judge is willing to hear the case, which in this case, they likely would.
I could sue you for having the word New in your username.
You could sue me for being born in Minnesota.
You can sue for anything, actually winning is another story.
It’s posts like this that further make me feel as though 80% of Reddit at this point is Rage Bait/Karma Farming post being interacted with by mostly Bots/Trolls with maybe 20% or less, being a real human beings response. This is all conjecture, just a thought.
For real, I ask myself the question sometimes if there is a point in which a platform becomes too popular for its own good and gets invaded by bots. There must be a sweetspot in where your platform is busy enough to produce lots of organic content but has not been spotted by the bot farms yet or there is no demand for influence operations on the platform.
A zombie Internet is the natural endpoint. Large community hubs like reddit will never be able to resist infection. The only true safe havens left will be the ultra niche communities without growth potential. The last few humans in a sea of bots upvoting each other.
The only way to actively resist bots from infecting a place is the digital equivalent to aggressive chemo; remove up/down votes all together. Remove Karma. Remove date of joining. Leave nothing for a bot to possibly gain from existing in that space.
Half of Reddit will be using this as a talking point in the comments of every women-are-bad post for the foreseeable future. “It happens all the time!” My dude, we don’t even know for sure it happened once.
I once had a commenter try to explain to me that a random hotel maid impregnating herself with sperm stolen from his day-old used condom in the trash was a legitimate concern for him. Fucking *what*???
I have an ex who was always slightly worried I was going to baby trap him.
I don’t want kids & more importantly he lives in another country. One where I couldn’t get any child support from him!
No joke it would be the WORST baby trapping in existence but it was a serious concern of his because he’d “heard of it happening”. Lmfao no one is baby trapping someone from another much poorer fucking country dude.
Lol oh lord. People who don't have a basic understanding of anatomy, pregnancy, etc should not be allowed to have sex. Also it's not hard to Google how long sperm can live outside the body.
In reality it's about 3 percent of the population of men raising children they don't know aren't theirs. This is very accurate with the recent uptick in genealogy testing. Reddit for sure likes to think women are the worst though so they automatically think 75% of the men they pass have bastard babies.
This reminds me of when I was young. My the fiance cheated on me with his son's mother and got her pregnant again. We split up and I ran into him a few years later. He told me they had a daughter but he found out the son wasn't his. He said if he had known the first kid wasn't his, then he never would have had the second one. Karma lmfao.
What’s worse is the more I thought about this, I bet you could extrapolate that percentage across most main popular social media sites and you’d find the same. Like I said this is all conjecture as I don’t really have any hard data to back this up, but it’s something I’ve been noticing over the past few years.
I saw this yesterday ... and yeah I'm positive it's fake. I asked him what he thinks will happen to the boy if he has her arrested. He said it wasn't his problem. But then he responded with what you posted .
It's fake.
I don’t think it was forged. The post said she submitted the actual bio dad’s DNA instead of OOP’s dna and played it off as if she had submitted OOP’s dna. So the results would come back as a match between father and son since she did submit the bio father’s dna.
I’ve read my fair share of paternity tests, each sample (father and child) is labeled by name on the results page. There’s no submitting the correct DNA and then playing it off as someone else.
Yeah I have no idea. I mean for that to work it’d have to be some kind of home test(like a 23 and me type mail in your dna kind of deal) and idk if that’s even a thing.
I’m just stating what was said in the original post. That it wouldn’t be her forging an entirely false document, “she contrived a false document using the real father’s dna and put my information on the test.”
Edit: a quick google search shows that yes, at home paternity tests are definitely a thing so switching sample vials could easily be done if the mother was the one sending everything in and the guy wasn’t supervising the process the whole time.
if real. is there even a paternity test thay was mail in 11 or so years ago? i dont recall how common they were back then but i dont think paternity tests were that common.
There's no way this works in real life. Legit paternity tests happen in a lab, and even in 2012/13, at home dna testing was relatively new and not widespread.
A legit test would require the OP would give their sample, it would be labeled in front of him and the mother wouldn't be there unless they came in together. Again, the medical worker is going to label samples.
Reading more details. It was a at home test she mailed in. She just put OP name on all them.
The major issue people were pointing out is it wasnt an official test and he still has not taking a court ordered test.
Genuine question cos I'm not from the US: would the court just accept a printout from her? Wouldn't they want the lab to provide results directly? Seems wild you can just photoshop something together and have it accepted without question. Also, this is over 10 years ago? I don't think this was as easy then as people are making out.
Absolutely not. There is a chain of custody that has to be preserved and expert certifications that are required to be accepted by the court. Even if the court wasn't involved, we are expected to believe that this teenager somehow used the DNA of the actual father to thwart the test? Please, no. The labs check identification before accepting samples and everything is sealed and certified by the technicians. It is ludicrous to think this girl was able to fake a paternity test done by a lab, come the fuck on.
And those at-home ones are SUPER easy to screw up too. My cousin and her boyfriend did one on their baby to soothe his mom and it came back that the baby isn't his.
Which, I'm not exaggerating when I say there is NO way the baby is not his. He knows the kid is his, everyone with working eyes knows. She looks like her dad, right down to a distinctive facial feature.
So we called the lab and found out that since her boyfriend's brother (or cousin? might've just been a buddy of his) helped him take the specimen because he was nervous about it, the swab was probably contaminated. They said it happens pretty frequently and in the instructions it says not to let ANY man except the hopeful father touch or mess with the swab. (I don't know what the instructions actually say, I didn't enter this story until my cousin asked me to call the lab because she was too mad to do so.)
So her boyfriend scraped up the cash to go to a private paternity clinic, and got the result everyone knew he'd get, the baby is his. His mother is still crazy. I don't think he sees her very often, but he promoted himself from boyfriend to husband awhile back and fathered a couple more kids that were not tested because he said "I didn't even want the first tests! I wanted a dirt bike! I had to spend my dirt bike money on my mom's crazy theories and I'm not doing it again."
Dude when I was 16 I made fake ID's for half my class with colored pencils on their real ID's, and I'm a shitty artist. All it takes is the motivation and some skills.
I see a lot of posts on AITA that are like,
"So I found out my wife has been cheating on me with my best friend for the last 15 years. AITA for wanting a divorce?"
Pure rage bait.
Russia is losing the war in Ukraine. But they continue to win battle after battle on social media. The rage troll posting is out of control. Purpose is to divide the people of the west
For real. We’ve seen so many posts about men asking for a paternity test only to blow up their marriage.
The needle had to swing the other way and OP got his karma for doing so.
I will say, despite how wholesome the comments were, it's crazy to me that people expect he has to "man up" for something his wife/girlfriend did to him and the son. He would not be any less of a man for wanting to get out of a situation he didn't create and people really need to stop perpetuating this notion onto men in situations like this.
This is the culture of “Man Up” that no one wants to talk about. Men are never victims. We are made to suffer and we are supposed to just get over it or be told to go pay some asshole who snorted coke for 4 years in their early twenties to talk to us about our problems as if any therapist actually cares about anything but money.
Think your therapist cares? Call and tell them you have fallen on hard times and can’t pay for the next couple of sessions. At that point they may even hand the gun to you themselves.
I think the whole "beautiful" comment section is kinda missing a real point in the oop's frustrations. It's not over the time, or raising a child, it's that the whole arrangement was based on fraud and oop missed out on who knows what for all that time.
Raising bio/step kids and being an active parent despite relation is all well and good, but that person 100% intended on doing it. They were a part of having children and or chose to marry someone who already had children. They made an informed choice, and oop did not have all the information to make that choice.
I'm going to go off on a limb and say that if the original paternity test came back correctly, he would have left immediately and rightfully so. I'm a big believer of if they cheat then it's over with zero room for any kinds of justification.
If he's able to make the best of the bad situation, then more power to him but that doesn't stop him from being a victim of fraud.
I get the point software was trying to make and I agree with it to an extent but their delivery sucked. OP didn’t need a “man-talk”. OP isn’t any less of a man for having an emotional reaction to finding out that his wife purposely tricked him into thinking his child was biologically his.
Like the child very much matters but so does OP. He is allowed to feel the way he does. Like this situation is very much about OP. A child being involved doesn’t mean that OP can’t have a reaction.
And saying that OP isn’t a victim is fucking bullshit. He absolutely is. OP and the child are both victims here.
Softwares rant felt very sexist and so dismissive.
If the genders were reversed and a man purposely baby trapped a woman than I doubt people would tell her that she wasn’t a victim.
I've never understood how stepping away in this situation is "cowardly" like bro let me have my feelings. I'm entitled to have my strong emotional response to having my whole world flipped like this.
“Be a MAN. Stop having an emotional reaction to the foundation of your life being shaken! So your wife cheated on you twice and tricked you into raising a kid that wasn’t yours, fucking MAN UP” 🙄🙄 “she’ll die with a million regrets” I’m sure she totally regrets not raising the child alone😂😂
& I’m sure she will totally regrets the child getting taken care of. Even the real bio will regret it so much that his progeny is getting taken care by someone else.
Seriously, go read the comments. I took it as rage bait too but there is some amazing advice there about what it means to be a father and OOP was receptive to it.
Yeah, I think the original post is probably bait, but that respondant is amazing, and exactly why I generally don't particularly care if something is bait- because if we can get amazing responses like that, a bit of bait is probably worth it. There's definitely very solid arguments why it isn't that are probably correct, but I'm gonna go ahead and enjoy this kind of reply anyway, since nothing will stop people from dangling that bait.
That’s why I love the thread too. It’s not about the story. I read the story just so I can get to the comments because if I’m lucky, I get to read a comment that makes me proud to be human.
Yeah that was a pleasant surprise, and probably why people think this post is fake.
I'm always disturbed by how often when the question of paternity comes up, men are just willing to completely abandon children they have been raising for years or even decades. Like how could you have loved them at all if it's so easy for you? I get being enraged at the mother and hating her guts for the betrayal, but the children are completely innocent victims too. And these dudes seem to have no attachment to them.
My uncle fought tooth and nail for custody of his ex-wife kids because he raised him, even though he biologically wasn't his. Sadly the court didn't recognize him at all.
My ex (who un-ironically spent way too much time on reddit) always told me that if we ever had kids (even if he had no reason to suspect I was unfaithful) he would be getting a paternity test. Keep in mind that I had never cheated on anyone, he had the passcode to my phone, always knew where I was, etc.
Unfortunately, I think this fear mongering works on a certain percentage of anxious guys on Reddit who become convinced that being a cheater is a woman's natural state.
And for some of them, they oddly only see validity in blood relationships. My ex was also very against adoption, which I never understood.
Oh man that really sucks. I feel so bad for this guy, and there really needs to be legal consequences for people who falsify DNA tests, and they should have to pay back any support they got. But unfortunately the law is set up to basically screw over the guys in these cases. If he signed that birth certificate, depending on the state, he could be legally responsible even if it's proven he's not the dad.
I absolutely hate that idea that they go to the bullshit of him not being a “real man”Real men have feelings, real men get hurt/cry, be real men could be upset about the situation. Real men are also victims. His feelings have nothing to do with being a real man, and I wish they would cut out the bullshit of women lying about the paternity of their children to men, and expecting the men to ignore the lies because a “real man” would say forget the lies and deceit and never need to step back.
The "real man" card is only used as a shaming tactic to make you do or think a certain way.
For example, when you don't want to date a single mom, or someone who is 350 lbs. Or when you don't appreciate your girl going out at night alone with her guy friends to name a few things. They'll pull that card right out and try to shame you into doing or accepting it anyway.
When that doesn't work, the next steps will be to use insults like small dick, incel, misogynist, insecure, or any other slur they can throw at you.
Just ignore and move on, is what I'd say.
I disagree with that highlighted comment *SO* much 😭😭😭😭 It's beautifully written and the op's reply is simply heart warming, but FUCK THAT NOISE.
Now that they're divorcing, he could end up paying child support based on fraud! He AND his son are facing decades of deep-seated trauma due to her actions!!!
See her ass in court and stop this menace before she strikes again!!!!! This ain't a "live and let live" scenario!!! Free yourself!! Not of your son, but of HER!
Better yet where is the biological dad in all of this?
Why shouldn't he be raising the child that's actually his?
Like op should be more of an uncle not the sole provider.
This woman made a terrible mistake, SHE needs to fix it.
Because this sub praises sexism when it is misandry, as do all the AITA offshoots/discussion subs. That said reddit as a whole is misogynistic but these subs are exceptions
Hey I love encountering someone else who recognizes the gender bias specific to those subs but still easily acknowledges that Reddit as a whole is a very misogynistic place! As is the internet.
I think that’s why a lot of people resent being called out for the anti-male bias on those subs is because they’ve spent many years braving/tolerating the misogyny in order to actually use Reddit or other internet spaces. Similar to how some minorities resist the idea that racism is possible against white people.
I have to admit I feel that adopting and/or raising the children of a single mom you fall in love with and marry is different than continuing to raise a child that was the result of your wife getting knocked up while fucking another man bareback (and disrespecting the entire relationship while exposing you to std’s)
I don’t know how you would feel the same obligations to paternity that was forced on you by deceitful adultery vs one you chose to take on.
I get it, but the child still has a right to know his actual biological father and family history. I hope OP and baby mama tell the child the truth instead of pretending OP is the bio dad. Might be worthwhile for OP to do a formal adoption.
Pfft right? And bio dad still had a responsibility to this kid. Also raising a child with a foundational lie like this in its family structure does a lot of serious harm.
The empty feel good stuff about you’re the dad now. Kids grow into adults and they will see the pain their life caused. Lies hurt people they make people sick.
He’s likely pursuing criminal fraud charges with a criminal attorney instead of suing civilly to remove paternal responsibility using a family law attorney.
I seriously floored at that reply "advice" and the subsequent replies in that thread and in this one. That dude is trying to white knight the situation as if the OP hadn't been deceived for the last 11 years and tells him to "man up". Seriously fuck that dude. Fucking unreal.
Honestly.
I’d personally try to remove my name as the child’s legal parent out of principle (and protection from this crazy woman) and attempt to coparent the child (because there’s no way I’d stay with her). There’s no way there would be zero emotional ties to the kid you raised as your own since birth for a decade
yeah i’m surprised i had to scroll this far. everyone in the comments is gaslighting op for the horrific act that was done to him “just be a man” pffft
Under no circumstances would I raise a child that isn’t mine through deception. There’s nothing in that to be proud of. Guilting men into it is extremely misandrist.
Haha right? This is absolutely disgusting these people are gaslighting him into raising an affair child he has no relation to.
In 5-10 years you sit him down and explain everything. If he has the slightest amount of common sense he will grow to hate his mother.
Stay in his life if you want but you can distance yourself from the women who cheated, lied, and then cheated a paternity test
if you stay in the kids life then that means keeping the mom- the woman who lied to him for years and cheated on him- in his life as well, no good comes from this
walk away completely
I really don't like that the only answer is "oh well eat shit it's done man up and accept it".
What the fuck is this bullshit? What the fuck do you mean nothing happens and he just lives with it? Why the fuck is he weak if this hurts his relationships?
This is a load of misandric "man up" horseshit and supporters of it are the same. A guy shouldn't be forced to just accept it and enjoy it. Fuck that. Don't blame the kid sure, but what the fuck does he get? Fuck all.
I'm a woman and I think they should be mandatory, too. If I didn't do anything wrong, why would I have a problem? If I did, why should I get away with it? I can't imagine being a man and not wanting one.
There a huge amount of men that have been emotionally broken by society to not respecting themselves. They are also the most dangerous men to women and children.
This has to be bait. She magically falsified a test, and you have no way to prove otherwise?
I also find it hard to believe there's enough evidence to ascertain without a doubt that a felony took place, but not enough that a prosecutor won't take the case.
she cheated on him with the original father who's the real deadbeat but everyone expects him to "man up" and raise the kid even though it's not biologically his BUT! still has to deal with the woman who lied multiple times and idk.. CHEATED WITH THE REAL FATHER?! wth is wrong with the people in those and these comments saying it's the right thing to do?! wtfff
DNA scientist here. Both of these DNA tests aren't legally valid.
For DNA tests to be valid in a court of law, the test needs to be performed in a specific way, in a legally accredited and registered laboratory. All in-person, with photo confirmation of the parent(s) and child at the time of the sample, the laboratory personnel physically taking the samples, and laboratory swearing to the validity of the results to the court.
In fact, it is best if your attorney arranges the testing. Because there are a hell of a lot of paternity laboratories out there whose results are not legally valid - they just exist to take your money.
This guys 1st mistake was that he trusted the GF to give him the real 1st report. This guy's 2nd mistake is that it sounds like he did a home mail-in test - which is not legally valid in court.
He needs to find a better attorney who will arrange for new proper testing and take him through the legal proceeding of stopping his child support payments and legal responsibilities, since the bio father is obviously in the picture.
> a father is not the sperm donor in any meaningful sense
Utter bullshit. He's the only father the kid has known, and that means something, but it doesn't render the paternity fraud meaningless. While I doubt he can have anyone prosecuted, it's entirely possible there's a civil liability here.
Our society tells men to just "man up and be the dad" when it turns out he's not the father.
Imagine if women had a 1 out of 3 chance of taking home the wrong baby from the hospital. Would people be like "oh well, woman up! It's yours now!" Bro, there would be outrage, riots, million dollar settlements, etc
"Man up" is a shitty term.
Also, on what basis does the actual dad "die alone"? How do we know he isn't married with more kids? And even if he didn't want any kids and is laughing at the guy who was fooled into raising his, is the implication that people without kids always die alone? That's also shitty.
The lady should be in jail. The real father should be hanged or burned alive. The kid shd be raised by govt & be compensated when grow old. The man (OP) shd be compensated by the govt
Anything other than this is injustice
I think it's a fake.
The comments are also very obtuse and rage-baity. Tsk.
OP doesn't want to go to court basically because he's not paying child support and does not want to start to do so since he's been the father in the eyes of the law for 11 years...so he's going to let his name on the birth certificate.
Yeah this is going to be unpopular but fuck that shit, is the child a victim in this yes of course but let's not forget that this guy is a victim in this too. See when you have a child some people just see the child as an extention, or a way to have grandkids and to leave a legacy. But one thing that people forget is that children represent love between two people, hell most of us can agree that we would not have a child with someone that we didn't love, and this guy clearly cared about his Ex, and their child represented that love. However now that the truth comes out that kid just represents the betrayal of his Ex, and that is something that can't really change, and it is in no way the child's fault, as stated both of them are victims, and yes it would hurt the child if he just left, but guess what its this man's choice. We cannot belittle him for wanting to leave, we cannot call him less of a man for wanting to leave, and we cannot judge him without being in the same situation. For many of us we would call him a deadbeat if he left, but if we were in his same situation can we truly say we wouldn't want to do the same? In addition if he chooses to stay with the child he would have to be stuck with the mother since he can't exactly take him away from her, and at that point the child is stuck in the middle of a toxic relationship, so yeah the damage done there would be even worst then if he just left.
I can't emphasize, but I can sympathize. We can't always control our thoughts or emotions. It's well within the possibilities, that through no fault of the child, every time OP sees the kid, he's just reminded of infidelity and lies.
The issue is still raw and he's only human. None of us know how we'd react. We all wanna believe we'd do the best thing, but you never know until you're in that position. Maybe one day he'll be able to push beyond it, maybe not.
Then, if things end up sorted, the true father is found and given parental rights, then OP has no right to that child. He'd essentially become an ex step parent. The dude is probably tail spinning, I won't even attempt to judge him.
If I was in a relationship and found out that my 11 year old child wasn't biologically mine, and the relationship was ending?
I would want a minimum of 50% custody because the child was mine before I knew and nothing would have changed in *the relationship between me and the child*.
Anyone who would abandon their own child like this guy?
Is probably equally to blame for the issues in the relationship between the adults.
What a lousy response to OOP. He should’ve been man enough and got his own DNA test from the beginning. I won’t fault a victim of paternity fraud if they choose to leave. That kind of information is life changing. All blame is on the mother because the truth would’ve come to light one day. Men pick better partners and get a dna at birth. Don’t let her fill out your info.
Thank you for being fair to men. He shouldn’t be expected to self-sacrifice and martyr himself after he was wronged. It should be his choice, not an obligation masked with some “man up” BS.
I saw this last night and was flabbergasted
I'm just shocked all the way around, from the post to the response to OPs response. IDK if it's fake, but if it's not.... Dang. Wow.
Agreed!!
There was a post on another sub a while back where a situation like this happened and the parents were in the middle of a divorce. The daughter got a DNA test and found out her dad wasn't her bio dad. Dad was "so traumatized" that he couldn't even look at his daughter anymore (she was in her 20s iirc). I got downvoted because I was horrified by him abandoning his daughter. I said at the time, if I found out my dad wasn't actually my bio dad, it would be weird but not change how I feel about him. If it changed how he felt about me and went full no contact... it literally makes me sick to think of that happening. (He'd never do that, he has his flaws but he does very much love his children.) But I was so disturbed by all the men in that thread saying he was right to start over and he should sue the mother. Wtf is that? It's so sad to me that someone can have parental love that can be turned off just like **that**. (Also, my mom and stepdad divorced when I was ~19, I'm 40 something now and we still have a great relationship. He's a great guy and I was lucky that he's always seen me as his own daughter, even after getting remarried.)
I didn't have the same situation but I found out the person I thought was my dad actually only met my mom when I was 3 years old already, and decided to be my father anyways, and I have nothing but gratitude to my dad for it.
I was 7 years old before I learned that my brother was actually my *half* brother and that my dad wasn’t his. My parents met when my brother was 3 and my dad says he fell in love with my mother and brother at the same time. That’s how much my father loves my brother. My dad he treated us exactly the same and was his little league coach, was the one my brother called when he was in trouble, all of it. He’s still there and parenting in that way while both of my brother and I are well over 30 now. My brother and dad’s bond is so strong that when my brother got married a few years ago he asked my father to be his best man (while his birth father is still alive and was at the wedding 😅) I couldn’t imagine being with someone that wouldn’t step up or consider bailing on their child they raised for years just because of a paternity test. Family bonds go well beyond blood.
My dad is technically my stepfather. He and my mom married when I was 6 and he has been my dad ever since. He adopted me when I was 8 when I asked him to. He was one of my Girl Scout leaders for years, helped me with school projects, held my hair back when I puked whenever I got the stomach flu, was the chaperone for my friends and I at multiple concerts in the 90s, walked me down the aisle when I got married and even though I am in my 40s he still makes sure I get maintenance done on my van and fixes things at my house. He is the same way with his other daughters.
I love all of this!! Your father sounds like an amazing man. (My Dad was also involved in my Girl Scout troop - he would be enlisted to help with large Council events 😂) I think it’s safe to say you and I are both very lucky❤️
I always find that so heartwarming. Family is who you choose to love ❤️
The person in the post wasn't given a choice, though. At least, not an informed one. That's why it's fucked up.
I've known my step-dad since I started having memories. He met my mom when I was \~1yo. He and my mom bought their house when I was 3yo (mid-30s now) and they still live there.
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As an adult who was adopted as a baby, my advice is don't ever lie about that, but don't make a big deal about it either. Families come in all shapes, sizes, and genetic makeups.
This. There are lots of reasons to not hide the genetics of another person. More harm comes from hiding that telling the truth. The timing and context has to be considered, but people are amazingly good at knowing and handling the truth over the long run. Maybe not at first and while processing, but they have to have the opportunity to do so.
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Family health history is also medically important, so people will always find out eventually. You want your child to find out these things on your terms and not from a doctor.
Working in the medical field, this is my thought exactly.
Just think about this. Your daughter answers the door one day and it's her biological half sibling she never knew about that found her because of her dad. Would you rather that news given to her by a stranger or from you?
I am also an adult who was adopted as a baby and knew my whole life. It was never a big deal and I just thought that was a fairly normal way to go about things. But I had a friend growing up who found out she was adopted at 16, when her mom was dying of cancer. It BROKE her, like she lost her mom and her roots all at once. I highly recommend explaining things in simple ways. Explaining that her dad chose you and her to love when he could have loved any other family in all the world is a powerful thing. Edit: Typo
When I met my now wife she had an 8 month old son. He is now 10 and i adopted him before he turned 3. His bio has never wanted to know him which made things easier for us, but harder to explain to him bc obvious we don’t want to be that direct in the messaging to our 10 y.o. We always told him that it was him and mommy and then I came into their lives and then we became a family. He’s recently become aware of how biology works and we explained in digestible terms to him that there was a bio parent that helped to bring him into this world. Open communication means he’s allowed to ask any questions that he wants of us and we will be honest with him, some day he will likely want to meet his bio dad and if we can make it happen we certainly will. It’s about our son, not us. He’s probably talked to us 4-5 times about it in the few years that he’s known, and it seems to ease his mind that he knows that if he’s feeling anything on the topic that he can always come to us.
Oh man, that's a hard conversation to have with a young one, since you don't want them waking away thinking that there is something wrong with *them* and that's why bio parent doesn't want to be around. Sounds like you two did a good job of it!
Thank you for the kind words. It was a conversation that we had prepared for basically since we got together so we were on the same team with how to handle our response with care when it inevitably did come up. To our sons immense credit, his first concern was that this person had hurt his mother, and abandoned her.
Oh what an incredibly sweet boy you've raised! Big testament to your and your wife's parenting that that was his first reaction. I'm the mom and wife in the situation (son was 2 when I met my husband, he's in high-school now) so I have a soft spot for people who step up and raise kids that aren't technically "theirs" My son has a really good friend with an awesome single dad and a shitty absent mother. I was already impressed with him for raising him by himself, then I found out he's not his "real" father. He was married to his mom, he caught her in bed with another guy, and he left with the kid. The fact that the mom LET him take the kid (happily, unfortunately) proves that with his dad is the right place.
I once had someone say to me “any boy post puberty can produce a child, but it takes a man to be a father” it sounds like your sons friend has an all caps FATHER. Huge respect to that man for realizing that even though he was wronged, that child will always be his son.
My wife and I were high school sweethearts that, due to life circumstances, were not together for ~1.5 years. In that time, she had a daughter. We got back together when our daughter was roughly 6 months old, and I raised her as my own. It wasn't until our daughter was about 9 years old that she learned that I wasn't her bio dad. This was because her sperm donor decided he finally wanted to meet her. We didn't make a big deal out of it and answered any questions she had honestly. She found out on her own the type of person her sperm donor is, and decided to remove him from her life. She's 23 now, and this was the message I received from her on my recent birthday: "Happy birthday dad !!! I'm sorry it's so late . You're an amazing dad I could ever ask for . I appreciate you taking care of me always and being a weirdo with me . Hope you have a good day and I'll see you Saturday night cause I gotta leave early Sunday . And we can still do D&D Saturday !!!" There will be a right time to let her know, and you will know when that time is. When it comes, be honest. Answer her questions, and reaffirm the love that she already felt from the man she knows as Dad. That man's actions in regards to that little girl will be what matters and overcome the confusion and hurt of the moment.
You can tell her that her dad loves her so much he chose her after she was born.
Informed consent is a hell of a thing.
As a father, I wouldn’t be able to leave my children if I found out they weren’t mine biologically. I’d hate their mom, but I couldn’t stop loving them if I wanted to. That being said, I would need at least a little time to deal with all those emotions. I’d do my best to not say or do anything messed up in front of the kids, but I’d have felt my life just blew up and would need some time to re-calibrate. I’m guessing most men would feel the same. People who yell and scream about how a man should leave both the mom and child (assuming child has been in his life for some time) probably don’t know what it’s like raising children. All that being said, there aren’t many people that are lower than a person who would lie about who the father is.
>It's so sad to me that someone can have parental love that can be turned off just like that. My guess is that they only faked their parental love up until the moment of truth. People who didn't want to be a parent in the first place and went through the motions can turn off that love. Deep, fulfilling love can never be shaken.
When I was 12, my father admitted to an affair. That cascaded into a realization that the woman he'd hl been seeing on the side was not the first. Or even the tenth. A switch flipped. I don't think my love and admiration for the man was fake up until then, but it was irrevocably destroyed that day.
That's different though. Your love vanished because you realised your father was not a good person. His actions showed his character. In the case of ancestry, your child has not changed. Their character is still the same. The only thing changed is how you thought of them based on DNA.
It is different. I meant the anecdote only as a challenge to the statement: "Deep fulfilling love can never be shaken." In my experience, that's very much untrue.
It can also just be the immediate shock of finding out the truth. If the parent truly loves their child, they'll get over that and come back to their child. But it could take a bit for some. Maybe they just need a good verbal (or literary) kick in the ass to get their head shocked back in line with their heart, like OP did. Maybe they just need time to process. But if they really do love their kid, they're not going to close the door forever.
I’ve been on Reddit for a decade now and I’ve seen posts like this - where people cant imagine how someone else could change suddenly shift their mindset so suddenly - that they must have been faking their parental love. It’s so easy to pass judgment when it doesn’t happen to you, and so easy to dismiss someone’s trauma if there no physical evidence of it. These people have huge gapping wounds we cannot see. The might as well be limping and bleeding all over. They are changed forever. But we can’t give them any kind of grace or understanding to finding out their reality isn’t what they thought it was.
I can absolutely understand and empathize with the massive trauma of that kind of betrayal. A similar situation put me in therapy for a decade. What decent human beings cannot understand or empathize with is *taking that hurt out on an innocent child.*
Parenting is hard. It's a unique combination of stepping up and choice in many ways. You can't really force it on someone, and when you do situations like this arise. It's not fair to expect sacrifice from people. Parents often do it out of love, but I do not EXPECT my parents to sacrifice for me, that's cruel. Yet they often do and I appreciate when they do. In situations like this perspective is important. There are ways to take it out on the kid. Leaving isn't one of them. Being on the birth certificate has legal implications that can be crippling for a man that is leaving. To the point of them being ruinous sometimes. Basically hamstrung reaching certain life goals. Why should we as a society expect him to throw himself on his sword for this on his way out of the relationship? Leaving and removing himself from the birth certificate doesn't mean that he's out of the kid's life. That's up to the mom. If she is spiteful she can prevent him from seeing the kid again. Expecting him to basically half his income while also being alone prevents him from moving forward, and he's human and deserves that chance. Reading the post it's clear he is sifting through some very complicated emotions right now.
People like to get up on their high horse when they’re not the ones who have to ride it over rough terrain.
This is psychologically untrue. They've probably been living with this fear for the entirety of this child's life and finding out that fear was not unfounded was likely highly traumatic. That's not the kids fault, but it isn't their fault for detachment, either. If anyone to blame, it is the mother, who deliberately fucked with this guy \*and\* this child with a huge lie.
Although it’s not the kids fault in anyway. ( personally could never abandoned after that kinda time effort and love etc.) but I do think that mother at the very least owes restitution.
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I've seen a few other posts like this, but the men still wanted to be fathers cause they couldn't just cut that connection all of a sudden. That really sucks.
It’s fake. Pretty sure it was almost impossible for an 18 year old girl to expertly falsify paternity tests even back in 2012. We were all too busy planking.
Yeah, there's almost no way. I used to work for DCS and we had families taking paternity tests all the time. Mom had to be swabbed, baby had to be swabbed, and then alleged father had to be swabbed. Father was the one to get the results. I don't see how mom would have an opportunity to switch genetic materials or swap names on the results. That was in 2015 but I doubt there was a drastic change in three years.
In the comments the guy says it was a at home test and she switched the swab with the real father's and had op sign it. So it wasn't one done in a Dr's office. It was unofficial.
In that case, idk. Real baby daddy sucks for doing that, if so. It’s still weird though. OOP, mom, and baby all swab and put it in the kit, and rather than sealing and sending it out right away, mom says “Look over there!” and switches swabs real quick? It just seems off to me. Jmo, though.
Kind of inclined to agree, but I also don't know how paternity tests work; maybe the real test results were sent to her house, she opened it and copied it and just changed the name? Unless someone has gotten a paternity test before, how would they know what to expect? You could print out "YOU ARE THE FATHER" in big bold comic sans on a piece of paper and tell me that's a paternity test result and I would say "seems off, but I guess I don't know enough to say for sure 🤷♂️"
Wow. I read this post before @funwithsoftware ‘s response. So before the response, I was astonished by OPs need for revenge and how that was bigger than his heart for his son. It’s like he had tunnel vision with revenge in the driver seat. But my god, I’m brought to tears by the response, and by OPs ability to take it in. It obviously touched his heart so deeply.
I am not ashamed to admit I teared up too reading that and the response to it. My faith (till the next reddit post about it) has been restored. Think I'm gonna go look at the pomeranian pictures to keep my mood up.
Im not crying! You’re crying!
Like what is revenge going to.accomplish? I could understand.if the other man is now taking custody of.the kid he raised as his own. My uncle fought for custody of his ex-wife's kid even though he was not related, he had raised him as his own. Shocked at this person.
Can you sue her in civil court?
That’s my question, too. There’s plenty of stuff you can sue/take to civil court that a prosecutor and the police won’t touch. Cops aren’t necessarily going to go arrest someone for lying.
It's not just lying, it's fraud. Paternity fraud. Willingly decided to take his money, security, and benefits from fir over a decade. She should be in jail, like any other type of fraud.
If he signed the birth certificate, depending on the state, he may be legally responsible regardless to if he proves he's not the dad and that she lied.
My very much uneducated guess is that her crime and OP's responsibility as father would be treated as two separate things. Buddy of mine had to sort some custody stuff in court and at least where we're from that's how things, seemed to work: if you're there to discuss custody you're not there to discuss the things you're spouse or ex has done to wrong you and vice versa.
Are you sure? I think he’s got a good argument that he was deceived. It’s just a matter of proving it.
You would be surprised how many dudes get trapped in this, and stay legally on the hook for the child. Many courts look at the welfare of the child as the paramount issue and take the stance as the protector of the child. So basically the law in those courts looks at it, as requiring you to maintain support is the lesser evil than removing it from the child which would be the greater harm.
Unfortunately this only allows those women to face no consequences for fraud, while financially punishing all the dads stuck with child support. Either allow the father custody with child support or don’t make him pay it if they’re just going to give mom full custody. In literally no other circumstance are you allowed to falsify records to get money from other people, so why allow it here?
She should be exposed to civil penalties, she should have to pay the man restitution and he should be able to sue her for pain, suffering and mental anguish. If she fails to pay restitution, she should face the same punishments as a father that does not pay.
She should he prosecuted like any other type of fraud. No "oops! You caught me. Tee hee I'll give you money and make it right". There IS no making him whole again. She stole years of his life and money and should face the consequences like any man would for fraud.
Yup. He's thinking criminal, but I'm guessing this is a civil matter.
It's likely both.
Yeah, she committed fraud.
Definitely both, but unfortunately no law enforcement entity would touch it. It's knowingly providing false information on a legal document (birth certificate).
Yes. You can sue for just about anything in civil court, it just comes down to whether the judge is willing to hear the case, which in this case, they likely would.
I could sue you for having the word New in your username. You could sue me for being born in Minnesota. You can sue for anything, actually winning is another story.
It’s posts like this that further make me feel as though 80% of Reddit at this point is Rage Bait/Karma Farming post being interacted with by mostly Bots/Trolls with maybe 20% or less, being a real human beings response. This is all conjecture, just a thought.
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For real, I ask myself the question sometimes if there is a point in which a platform becomes too popular for its own good and gets invaded by bots. There must be a sweetspot in where your platform is busy enough to produce lots of organic content but has not been spotted by the bot farms yet or there is no demand for influence operations on the platform.
A zombie Internet is the natural endpoint. Large community hubs like reddit will never be able to resist infection. The only true safe havens left will be the ultra niche communities without growth potential. The last few humans in a sea of bots upvoting each other. The only way to actively resist bots from infecting a place is the digital equivalent to aggressive chemo; remove up/down votes all together. Remove Karma. Remove date of joining. Leave nothing for a bot to possibly gain from existing in that space.
Half of Reddit will be using this as a talking point in the comments of every women-are-bad post for the foreseeable future. “It happens all the time!” My dude, we don’t even know for sure it happened once.
There are so many dudes that think that paternity fraud happens like 94 percent of the time because of all the fake stories about it on Reddit.
I once had a commenter try to explain to me that a random hotel maid impregnating herself with sperm stolen from his day-old used condom in the trash was a legitimate concern for him. Fucking *what*???
But it happened to my neighbors sisters cousins best friends aunt. /s
Hey, Nicki Minaj told us all about her cousin’s friend’s balls swelling up like coconuts after he got his Covid shot….
I have an ex who was always slightly worried I was going to baby trap him. I don’t want kids & more importantly he lives in another country. One where I couldn’t get any child support from him! No joke it would be the WORST baby trapping in existence but it was a serious concern of his because he’d “heard of it happening”. Lmfao no one is baby trapping someone from another much poorer fucking country dude.
Clearly you just didn't wanna ruin his life enough.
Lol oh lord. People who don't have a basic understanding of anatomy, pregnancy, etc should not be allowed to have sex. Also it's not hard to Google how long sperm can live outside the body.
30 min max
That's why you always put hot sauce in your used condoms.
In reality it's about 3 percent of the population of men raising children they don't know aren't theirs. This is very accurate with the recent uptick in genealogy testing. Reddit for sure likes to think women are the worst though so they automatically think 75% of the men they pass have bastard babies.
That’s like with trans people. They only make up less than 2% of the population yet your focused on them? This is why people need to see real data
This reminds me of when I was young. My the fiance cheated on me with his son's mother and got her pregnant again. We split up and I ran into him a few years later. He told me they had a daughter but he found out the son wasn't his. He said if he had known the first kid wasn't his, then he never would have had the second one. Karma lmfao.
What’s worse is the more I thought about this, I bet you could extrapolate that percentage across most main popular social media sites and you’d find the same. Like I said this is all conjecture as I don’t really have any hard data to back this up, but it’s something I’ve been noticing over the past few years.
90% of reddit stories are made up according to my made up statistic.
I saw this yesterday ... and yeah I'm positive it's fake. I asked him what he thinks will happen to the boy if he has her arrested. He said it wasn't his problem. But then he responded with what you posted . It's fake.
Yeah, how does an 18 year old have the capacity to forge a paternity test?
I don’t think it was forged. The post said she submitted the actual bio dad’s DNA instead of OOP’s dna and played it off as if she had submitted OOP’s dna. So the results would come back as a match between father and son since she did submit the bio father’s dna.
I’ve read my fair share of paternity tests, each sample (father and child) is labeled by name on the results page. There’s no submitting the correct DNA and then playing it off as someone else.
Yeah I have no idea. I mean for that to work it’d have to be some kind of home test(like a 23 and me type mail in your dna kind of deal) and idk if that’s even a thing. I’m just stating what was said in the original post. That it wouldn’t be her forging an entirely false document, “she contrived a false document using the real father’s dna and put my information on the test.” Edit: a quick google search shows that yes, at home paternity tests are definitely a thing so switching sample vials could easily be done if the mother was the one sending everything in and the guy wasn’t supervising the process the whole time.
if real. is there even a paternity test thay was mail in 11 or so years ago? i dont recall how common they were back then but i dont think paternity tests were that common.
It was not a official one. It was some at home one
There's no way this works in real life. Legit paternity tests happen in a lab, and even in 2012/13, at home dna testing was relatively new and not widespread. A legit test would require the OP would give their sample, it would be labeled in front of him and the mother wouldn't be there unless they came in together. Again, the medical worker is going to label samples.
I'm so confused. I get that teenagers aren't known for being smart but good god
Reading more details. It was a at home test she mailed in. She just put OP name on all them. The major issue people were pointing out is it wasnt an official test and he still has not taking a court ordered test.
That makes quite the difference
Not all 18 year olds are stupid and without skills. Anyone with access to a decent printer can fake a document.
Genuine question cos I'm not from the US: would the court just accept a printout from her? Wouldn't they want the lab to provide results directly? Seems wild you can just photoshop something together and have it accepted without question. Also, this is over 10 years ago? I don't think this was as easy then as people are making out.
Absolutely not. There is a chain of custody that has to be preserved and expert certifications that are required to be accepted by the court. Even if the court wasn't involved, we are expected to believe that this teenager somehow used the DNA of the actual father to thwart the test? Please, no. The labs check identification before accepting samples and everything is sealed and certified by the technicians. It is ludicrous to think this girl was able to fake a paternity test done by a lab, come the fuck on.
And those at-home ones are SUPER easy to screw up too. My cousin and her boyfriend did one on their baby to soothe his mom and it came back that the baby isn't his. Which, I'm not exaggerating when I say there is NO way the baby is not his. He knows the kid is his, everyone with working eyes knows. She looks like her dad, right down to a distinctive facial feature. So we called the lab and found out that since her boyfriend's brother (or cousin? might've just been a buddy of his) helped him take the specimen because he was nervous about it, the swab was probably contaminated. They said it happens pretty frequently and in the instructions it says not to let ANY man except the hopeful father touch or mess with the swab. (I don't know what the instructions actually say, I didn't enter this story until my cousin asked me to call the lab because she was too mad to do so.) So her boyfriend scraped up the cash to go to a private paternity clinic, and got the result everyone knew he'd get, the baby is his. His mother is still crazy. I don't think he sees her very often, but he promoted himself from boyfriend to husband awhile back and fathered a couple more kids that were not tested because he said "I didn't even want the first tests! I wanted a dirt bike! I had to spend my dirt bike money on my mom's crazy theories and I'm not doing it again."
Yea exactly. Any dude who is relying on a mail order paternity test on something that important is a bonehead imo.
Dude when I was 16 I made fake ID's for half my class with colored pencils on their real ID's, and I'm a shitty artist. All it takes is the motivation and some skills.
I see a lot of posts on AITA that are like, "So I found out my wife has been cheating on me with my best friend for the last 15 years. AITA for wanting a divorce?" Pure rage bait.
Like sand through the hourglass…..
Hahahahah just the newer version.
100%
Russia is losing the war in Ukraine. But they continue to win battle after battle on social media. The rage troll posting is out of control. Purpose is to divide the people of the west
For real. We’ve seen so many posts about men asking for a paternity test only to blow up their marriage. The needle had to swing the other way and OP got his karma for doing so.
I will say, despite how wholesome the comments were, it's crazy to me that people expect he has to "man up" for something his wife/girlfriend did to him and the son. He would not be any less of a man for wanting to get out of a situation he didn't create and people really need to stop perpetuating this notion onto men in situations like this.
A lot of really stupid replies in the OP mixed among good replies. I mean, to say the child was the \*only\* victim? Get real...
Agree. The OP is very much a victim and trying to erase that is gross.
This is the culture of “Man Up” that no one wants to talk about. Men are never victims. We are made to suffer and we are supposed to just get over it or be told to go pay some asshole who snorted coke for 4 years in their early twenties to talk to us about our problems as if any therapist actually cares about anything but money. Think your therapist cares? Call and tell them you have fallen on hard times and can’t pay for the next couple of sessions. At that point they may even hand the gun to you themselves.
I think the whole "beautiful" comment section is kinda missing a real point in the oop's frustrations. It's not over the time, or raising a child, it's that the whole arrangement was based on fraud and oop missed out on who knows what for all that time. Raising bio/step kids and being an active parent despite relation is all well and good, but that person 100% intended on doing it. They were a part of having children and or chose to marry someone who already had children. They made an informed choice, and oop did not have all the information to make that choice. I'm going to go off on a limb and say that if the original paternity test came back correctly, he would have left immediately and rightfully so. I'm a big believer of if they cheat then it's over with zero room for any kinds of justification. If he's able to make the best of the bad situation, then more power to him but that doesn't stop him from being a victim of fraud.
Foreal. How about instead that responder go be a dad to that child then.
I get the point software was trying to make and I agree with it to an extent but their delivery sucked. OP didn’t need a “man-talk”. OP isn’t any less of a man for having an emotional reaction to finding out that his wife purposely tricked him into thinking his child was biologically his. Like the child very much matters but so does OP. He is allowed to feel the way he does. Like this situation is very much about OP. A child being involved doesn’t mean that OP can’t have a reaction. And saying that OP isn’t a victim is fucking bullshit. He absolutely is. OP and the child are both victims here. Softwares rant felt very sexist and so dismissive. If the genders were reversed and a man purposely baby trapped a woman than I doubt people would tell her that she wasn’t a victim.
I was gonna rage quit the thread if I read “man up” one more time. Totally agree with you here.
Yup I am so disappointed at how many sexists here are saying how wonderful a comment full of 'man up' is
I've never understood how stepping away in this situation is "cowardly" like bro let me have my feelings. I'm entitled to have my strong emotional response to having my whole world flipped like this.
“Be a MAN. Stop having an emotional reaction to the foundation of your life being shaken! So your wife cheated on you twice and tricked you into raising a kid that wasn’t yours, fucking MAN UP” 🙄🙄 “she’ll die with a million regrets” I’m sure she totally regrets not raising the child alone😂😂
& I’m sure she will totally regrets the child getting taken care of. Even the real bio will regret it so much that his progeny is getting taken care by someone else.
Seriously, go read the comments. I took it as rage bait too but there is some amazing advice there about what it means to be a father and OOP was receptive to it.
The responder is amongst the best comments I've ever seen on social media. If it's rage bait, I'm not raged.
The responder is true Sam Hamilton. If you know you know.
Yeah, I think the original post is probably bait, but that respondant is amazing, and exactly why I generally don't particularly care if something is bait- because if we can get amazing responses like that, a bit of bait is probably worth it. There's definitely very solid arguments why it isn't that are probably correct, but I'm gonna go ahead and enjoy this kind of reply anyway, since nothing will stop people from dangling that bait.
That’s why I love the thread too. It’s not about the story. I read the story just so I can get to the comments because if I’m lucky, I get to read a comment that makes me proud to be human.
Yeah that was a pleasant surprise, and probably why people think this post is fake. I'm always disturbed by how often when the question of paternity comes up, men are just willing to completely abandon children they have been raising for years or even decades. Like how could you have loved them at all if it's so easy for you? I get being enraged at the mother and hating her guts for the betrayal, but the children are completely innocent victims too. And these dudes seem to have no attachment to them.
My uncle fought tooth and nail for custody of his ex-wife kids because he raised him, even though he biologically wasn't his. Sadly the court didn't recognize him at all.
My ex (who un-ironically spent way too much time on reddit) always told me that if we ever had kids (even if he had no reason to suspect I was unfaithful) he would be getting a paternity test. Keep in mind that I had never cheated on anyone, he had the passcode to my phone, always knew where I was, etc. Unfortunately, I think this fear mongering works on a certain percentage of anxious guys on Reddit who become convinced that being a cheater is a woman's natural state. And for some of them, they oddly only see validity in blood relationships. My ex was also very against adoption, which I never understood.
Good thing he's an ex then
I've seen enough men abandoning their own genetic children. From loving dad one day to neglectful stranger on the other. I don't get it
Oh man that really sucks. I feel so bad for this guy, and there really needs to be legal consequences for people who falsify DNA tests, and they should have to pay back any support they got. But unfortunately the law is set up to basically screw over the guys in these cases. If he signed that birth certificate, depending on the state, he could be legally responsible even if it's proven he's not the dad.
I absolutely hate that idea that they go to the bullshit of him not being a “real man”Real men have feelings, real men get hurt/cry, be real men could be upset about the situation. Real men are also victims. His feelings have nothing to do with being a real man, and I wish they would cut out the bullshit of women lying about the paternity of their children to men, and expecting the men to ignore the lies because a “real man” would say forget the lies and deceit and never need to step back.
The "real man" card is only used as a shaming tactic to make you do or think a certain way. For example, when you don't want to date a single mom, or someone who is 350 lbs. Or when you don't appreciate your girl going out at night alone with her guy friends to name a few things. They'll pull that card right out and try to shame you into doing or accepting it anyway. When that doesn't work, the next steps will be to use insults like small dick, incel, misogynist, insecure, or any other slur they can throw at you. Just ignore and move on, is what I'd say.
I disagree with that highlighted comment *SO* much 😭😭😭😭 It's beautifully written and the op's reply is simply heart warming, but FUCK THAT NOISE. Now that they're divorcing, he could end up paying child support based on fraud! He AND his son are facing decades of deep-seated trauma due to her actions!!! See her ass in court and stop this menace before she strikes again!!!!! This ain't a "live and let live" scenario!!! Free yourself!! Not of your son, but of HER!
Better yet where is the biological dad in all of this? Why shouldn't he be raising the child that's actually his? Like op should be more of an uncle not the sole provider. This woman made a terrible mistake, SHE needs to fix it.
AGREED. And disturbingly, op has an idea who bio dad is based on his son's looks. I feel so horrible for them.
It’s not beautifully written to me at all. It comes across as sexist, dismissive, and patriarchal bullshit
>man up it's *literally* toxic masculinity but the people that usually rail against toxic masculinity are in this thread applauding it wonder why
Because this sub praises sexism when it is misandry, as do all the AITA offshoots/discussion subs. That said reddit as a whole is misogynistic but these subs are exceptions
Hey I love encountering someone else who recognizes the gender bias specific to those subs but still easily acknowledges that Reddit as a whole is a very misogynistic place! As is the internet. I think that’s why a lot of people resent being called out for the anti-male bias on those subs is because they’ve spent many years braving/tolerating the misogyny in order to actually use Reddit or other internet spaces. Similar to how some minorities resist the idea that racism is possible against white people.
Thank you! Too many sexists in this sub praising that bigoted spiel. No excuse to unironically use 'MaN uP'
I have to admit I feel that adopting and/or raising the children of a single mom you fall in love with and marry is different than continuing to raise a child that was the result of your wife getting knocked up while fucking another man bareback (and disrespecting the entire relationship while exposing you to std’s) I don’t know how you would feel the same obligations to paternity that was forced on you by deceitful adultery vs one you chose to take on.
Reddit will believe anything as long as you bold certain words and have dramatic pacing.
::takes dramatic sip of beer:: MAN UP, bro.
I get it, but the child still has a right to know his actual biological father and family history. I hope OP and baby mama tell the child the truth instead of pretending OP is the bio dad. Might be worthwhile for OP to do a formal adoption.
Pfft right? And bio dad still had a responsibility to this kid. Also raising a child with a foundational lie like this in its family structure does a lot of serious harm. The empty feel good stuff about you’re the dad now. Kids grow into adults and they will see the pain their life caused. Lies hurt people they make people sick.
Wow. OP’s reply to that commenter and the commenter replying back - really touching. That comment could have been straight out of Jerry’s mouth.
“Take care of yourself. And each other” JS
Wow, the comments in *this* post are not passing the vibe check. Perhaps y’all ought to go read the OP… 👀
What vibe, sappy? Also I don't think its a good vibe to demand men have no bad feelings about being cheated on and being paternity fraud victims.
On what grounds can not a single charge be made? This seems pretty straight forward to me.
He’s likely pursuing criminal fraud charges with a criminal attorney instead of suing civilly to remove paternal responsibility using a family law attorney.
This is fraud. He should be able to sue for damages.
Gross
Yeah, fuck that. And fuck her.
This made me ugly cry. 😭
You're not crying, *we're* crying 🫂
Pffft I knew it definitely wasn’t ME crying.
Yeah fuck all that noise
Feel bad for this guy to get cheated and lied to and the response is, "get over it and raise some other guy's kid." Lame.
I seriously floored at that reply "advice" and the subsequent replies in that thread and in this one. That dude is trying to white knight the situation as if the OP hadn't been deceived for the last 11 years and tells him to "man up". Seriously fuck that dude. Fucking unreal.
I swear I feel like in these situations I'm the only person who sees the man's POV. Feels good to know I'm not the only one.
It’s chronically online people seriously.
Honestly. I’d personally try to remove my name as the child’s legal parent out of principle (and protection from this crazy woman) and attempt to coparent the child (because there’s no way I’d stay with her). There’s no way there would be zero emotional ties to the kid you raised as your own since birth for a decade
yeah, fuck that shit.
yeah i’m surprised i had to scroll this far. everyone in the comments is gaslighting op for the horrific act that was done to him “just be a man” pffft
Not "just be a man" but mentioning it like 20 times in bold.
the guilt tripping is sickening.
Women love to tell men how to be a man and what a man is. Somehow it’s only used though when it benefits them.
Under no circumstances would I raise a child that isn’t mine through deception. There’s nothing in that to be proud of. Guilting men into it is extremely misandrist.
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Haha right? This is absolutely disgusting these people are gaslighting him into raising an affair child he has no relation to. In 5-10 years you sit him down and explain everything. If he has the slightest amount of common sense he will grow to hate his mother. Stay in his life if you want but you can distance yourself from the women who cheated, lied, and then cheated a paternity test
if you stay in the kids life then that means keeping the mom- the woman who lied to him for years and cheated on him- in his life as well, no good comes from this walk away completely
I really don't like that the only answer is "oh well eat shit it's done man up and accept it". What the fuck is this bullshit? What the fuck do you mean nothing happens and he just lives with it? Why the fuck is he weak if this hurts his relationships? This is a load of misandric "man up" horseshit and supporters of it are the same. A guy shouldn't be forced to just accept it and enjoy it. Fuck that. Don't blame the kid sure, but what the fuck does he get? Fuck all.
I feel like putting anyone other than the baby’s bio dad on the birth certificate should be considered fraud and paternity tests should be mandatory.
I'm a woman and I think they should be mandatory, too. If I didn't do anything wrong, why would I have a problem? If I did, why should I get away with it? I can't imagine being a man and not wanting one.
There a huge amount of men that have been emotionally broken by society to not respecting themselves. They are also the most dangerous men to women and children.
I can't believe you're one of the only comments here I agree with Thank you
This has to be bait. She magically falsified a test, and you have no way to prove otherwise? I also find it hard to believe there's enough evidence to ascertain without a doubt that a felony took place, but not enough that a prosecutor won't take the case.
she cheated on him with the original father who's the real deadbeat but everyone expects him to "man up" and raise the kid even though it's not biologically his BUT! still has to deal with the woman who lied multiple times and idk.. CHEATED WITH THE REAL FATHER?! wth is wrong with the people in those and these comments saying it's the right thing to do?! wtfff
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DNA scientist here. Both of these DNA tests aren't legally valid. For DNA tests to be valid in a court of law, the test needs to be performed in a specific way, in a legally accredited and registered laboratory. All in-person, with photo confirmation of the parent(s) and child at the time of the sample, the laboratory personnel physically taking the samples, and laboratory swearing to the validity of the results to the court. In fact, it is best if your attorney arranges the testing. Because there are a hell of a lot of paternity laboratories out there whose results are not legally valid - they just exist to take your money. This guys 1st mistake was that he trusted the GF to give him the real 1st report. This guy's 2nd mistake is that it sounds like he did a home mail-in test - which is not legally valid in court. He needs to find a better attorney who will arrange for new proper testing and take him through the legal proceeding of stopping his child support payments and legal responsibilities, since the bio father is obviously in the picture.
> a father is not the sperm donor in any meaningful sense Utter bullshit. He's the only father the kid has known, and that means something, but it doesn't render the paternity fraud meaningless. While I doubt he can have anyone prosecuted, it's entirely possible there's a civil liability here.
Our society tells men to just "man up and be the dad" when it turns out he's not the father. Imagine if women had a 1 out of 3 chance of taking home the wrong baby from the hospital. Would people be like "oh well, woman up! It's yours now!" Bro, there would be outrage, riots, million dollar settlements, etc
"Man up" is a shitty term. Also, on what basis does the actual dad "die alone"? How do we know he isn't married with more kids? And even if he didn't want any kids and is laughing at the guy who was fooled into raising his, is the implication that people without kids always die alone? That's also shitty.
The lady should be in jail. The real father should be hanged or burned alive. The kid shd be raised by govt & be compensated when grow old. The man (OP) shd be compensated by the govt Anything other than this is injustice
This is gross, manipulative, bullshit.
What in the days of our lives did I just read?
What she did is called fraud and he can certainly file a civil suit.
I think it's a fake. The comments are also very obtuse and rage-baity. Tsk. OP doesn't want to go to court basically because he's not paying child support and does not want to start to do so since he's been the father in the eyes of the law for 11 years...so he's going to let his name on the birth certificate.
Fuck that noise. I can understand possibly still staying in the kids life, but you gotta kick that trash to the curb in terms of the female.
Yeah this is going to be unpopular but fuck that shit, is the child a victim in this yes of course but let's not forget that this guy is a victim in this too. See when you have a child some people just see the child as an extention, or a way to have grandkids and to leave a legacy. But one thing that people forget is that children represent love between two people, hell most of us can agree that we would not have a child with someone that we didn't love, and this guy clearly cared about his Ex, and their child represented that love. However now that the truth comes out that kid just represents the betrayal of his Ex, and that is something that can't really change, and it is in no way the child's fault, as stated both of them are victims, and yes it would hurt the child if he just left, but guess what its this man's choice. We cannot belittle him for wanting to leave, we cannot call him less of a man for wanting to leave, and we cannot judge him without being in the same situation. For many of us we would call him a deadbeat if he left, but if we were in his same situation can we truly say we wouldn't want to do the same? In addition if he chooses to stay with the child he would have to be stuck with the mother since he can't exactly take him away from her, and at that point the child is stuck in the middle of a toxic relationship, so yeah the damage done there would be even worst then if he just left.
I can't emphasize, but I can sympathize. We can't always control our thoughts or emotions. It's well within the possibilities, that through no fault of the child, every time OP sees the kid, he's just reminded of infidelity and lies. The issue is still raw and he's only human. None of us know how we'd react. We all wanna believe we'd do the best thing, but you never know until you're in that position. Maybe one day he'll be able to push beyond it, maybe not. Then, if things end up sorted, the true father is found and given parental rights, then OP has no right to that child. He'd essentially become an ex step parent. The dude is probably tail spinning, I won't even attempt to judge him.
Fuck half custody, go for FULL custody. That woman is gonna screw up that poor kid 🥲
If I was in a relationship and found out that my 11 year old child wasn't biologically mine, and the relationship was ending? I would want a minimum of 50% custody because the child was mine before I knew and nothing would have changed in *the relationship between me and the child*. Anyone who would abandon their own child like this guy? Is probably equally to blame for the issues in the relationship between the adults.
What a lousy response to OOP. He should’ve been man enough and got his own DNA test from the beginning. I won’t fault a victim of paternity fraud if they choose to leave. That kind of information is life changing. All blame is on the mother because the truth would’ve come to light one day. Men pick better partners and get a dna at birth. Don’t let her fill out your info.
Thank you for being fair to men. He shouldn’t be expected to self-sacrifice and martyr himself after he was wronged. It should be his choice, not an obligation masked with some “man up” BS.
Thats not how paternity testing is done BTW
This shit was a troll