Q: can you offer to drop a child support case if the other party agrees to sign away his rights?
I have full legal and full physical custody of my 3-year-old daughter. I have a teleconference call with my daughter's father and a child support conciliator. can I offer to drop the case if he signs his rights away. he didn't meet her till she was 7-month-old. old filed for custody because his then girlfriend made him do it. they moved to Texas when she was a year old. he moved back some time after that. has only seen her twice in 2 years, once because his parents invited him to an outing we were having, and the second time was at his brother's wedding that my daughter and I attended. her father did not acknowledge her, nor spoke one word to her. just dirty looks the whole time. no contact aside for those two events. he did have another child while in text that he signed his rights away to his mother, my daughter's grandmother ended up adopting that child. what are my options, we live in Monroe County pa. I have many family members willing to sign the father spot.
A:
We here are strictly prohibited from assuming the position of a lawyer representing a client and rendering legal advice. We cannot say what legal steps an asker must take to arrive at her legal conclusion. We can educate, and that is how best to approach this asker's question.
In a purely private world, a couple with a child can decide anything they want. The can support the child according to a government formula or not. They can travel the world and they can share time or totally avoid time with the child. That is the basic freedom each American parent has.
The situation dramatically changes when a petition is filed in a court, for example, a child support petition in a child support court. There is a near total federal preemption of family law in the country. This started long ago under Carter with the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, and went through the Clintons with the Adoption and Safe Families Act and domestic violence legislation. The Clintons also fielded child support enforcement. That's the one with debtor's jail for not paying child support.
The court of common pleas child support section is governed by the federal Child Support Standards Act that drives the support mechanism throughout the nation. An American cannot count on a "county" as deciding matters, but rather must count on a national policy governing family law matters.
One matter is that no American can "sign" away his child. A termination of parental rights can sever that bond, or an adoption by a ready, willing, and able parent (a new boyfriend, or perhaps a husband) can sever that bond. Otherwise, Pennsylvania policy these days is to grant 50/50 custody for every man simply for the asking. If the asker pursues child support in a court, the other parent is virtually guaranteed split custody of the child. He may exercise this policy at any point up to the child's eighteenth birthday whether the asker files for child support or not.
How the man treats the child now matters for nothing. A family law court is a reunification court and the court will pull out all the stops in reuniting the other parent and his child.
For a more cogent analysis, the asker must retain private counsel and share her private facts with that counsel. We here cannot guide the asker as to what to do next.
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