When Allan Karr of Orange County, Calif., married his pregnant girlfriend, he thought he was doing the right thing for the child. “I did not want to get married,” Karr says. “She basically coerced me into getting married based on the fact that I want to be a good person.”
Just a few months later, Karr learned just what he had married when his wife — now ex-wife — was brought up on charges in a rape case she had started against six men. She had lied about the rape and a videotape proved it. Still, Karr ran to her defense, bailing her out of jail and believing what she told him. “Of course I believed her,” Karr says. “She was my wife.”
Once their child was born, Karr’s wife took off, calling him just once to say he would never see her — or their one-year-old son — again. Since then, the battle to keep his son in his life — despite his ex-wife’s criminal past, despite her documented lies and despite what Karr calls “her continual harassment” — has raged.
In Karr’s case, marrying his ex may have been the exact wrong thing to do. “My whole life was shattered,” said Karr who was not only dealing with the child support and custody issues involved with the child, but also had to deal with the myriad issues that come up in any divorce: the dividing of assets, the anger and acrimony and the many other issues unique to the end of a marriage.
But being married to the mother does not necessarily help a man in court, says Mel Feit, the director of the National Center for Men
(http://www.nationalcenterformen.org), a men’s rights group based in Michigan that believes there are challenges to being both a married and unmarried man going before family court. “Each circumstance brings a different set of problems,” Feit says.
For a never married man, there are a few obstacles to overcome in order to establish paternity and claim visitation time. A man who was not married to the mother might have to register and sign an acknowledgement of paternity if he wants to be the legal father. If he and the mother disagree on the last name of the child or on whether he can be on the birth certificate, there are more obstacles and legal wrangling he will have to face, Feit says.
Further, a couple who never got married might have had an easier breakup, but that does not necessarily make sharing a child easier, Feit says. “A never married woman might feel she should be more in control and that can make it much more difficult.”
Still, Feit has seen many married couples split. And when they do, “the accusations often fly,” he says. Some of those accusations can bring lifelong damage to the father-child relationship, says Feit who has seen many of the men his group counsels lose their relationships with their children not because of the court, but because of the relationship with the ex-wife. “Married people tend to fight more aggressively in court,” Feit says.
For Karr, this has been the case. According to him, his ex-wife has exploited some of his mistakes, often blowing them out of proportion and in many cases outright lying, in order to drive a wedge between he and his son, who is now nearly 3-years-old. “Every time we went into court, she would get her way because of some kind of technicality,” Karr says.
Although they did share custody, she was able to make a series of rules that hindered Karr’s relationship with his son significantly as well as his son’s relationship with Karr’s family. These rules included regulations about being around alcohol and what kind of childcare Karr could provide. “She basically made it so we could not go to a restaurant,” Karr says.
Additionally, Karr was required to provide an apartment for her and countless other stipulations that he feels may have been different had they never married. Still, Karr loves his son. He is currently paying for him to be in a private school his son is not attending because his mother does not want him to. But Karr continues to pay in the hope that she will change her mind. “It is one of the best schools in Orange County,” says Karr who would do anything to be with his son.
