Baby Daddies

I'm sure most of you are filled in on the situation but in case you've forgotten here's the details:

My brother Cody was dating a girl, Crystal who is about 4 years older and has a 5 year old son. First of all, having kids brings baggage to a relationship (sad but true) and my brother is very young for his years so I wasn't all that kosher with him dating a girl with a kid (let alone someone so much older than him). Secondly, I have rarely met another Crystal I have liked.

That being said I had met her with an open mind. So in August/September of 2007 I met the girl and her kid. The kid's name is Blake and is a pretty cute one. His mother (& my brother's girlfriend at the time) was something else. She is one of those people who acts more like a big sister than a mother. She would say things to her son Blake like "don't be stupid" and "don't be a butthead" and I really hate when people talk to their kids like that. I think it's SO important for a mother to be her kids' #1 fan & supporter. Anyhoo, I wasn't too impressed with her. Then while I was there my brother & his girlfriend got into a mega fight - not in front of me as they lived together already (yes after they had only been dating for at most 4 months) & I was at my Aunt's house - but he come over to my Aunt's so we knew it was going on. When I left after the weekend it seemed they would be breaking up shortly.

One week or so later I get a phone call from my dad saying 'guess what?' and I correctly guessed that she was pregnant. Seemed a little too convenient. After Christmas the two of them got into yet another fight where she got violent & starting throwing things at him. My brother called my mom & said he wanted to leave and she encourage him to as if the cops were ever called they'd hardly believe this pregnant lady was the one being violent. She was definitely pissed that he left her as i'm sure her frame of mind was that babies trap men into relationships.

Her dates never really made sense along the way so I doubted she was pregnant the whole time but she did end up popping out a baby on May 2, 2008. However she ensured my brother wasn't there when baby was born by calling my Uncle's cell phone @ 2am instead of their house phone (my brother lives with my Aunt & Uncle). So she took the liberty of naming the baby herself: Chaise Alexander Corey Major (note my brother's name is Cody David Johnson so there is no reference to him, but Corey does happen to be one of their male friend's name, oh & she wasn't welcome at their house for a while...hmmm). So anyway, my brother was pretty upset about that, but he's also not the sharpest dude so they convinced him that he had to sign the bab papers and so he basically accepted the name by doing that.

In the beginning, when my mom & I came down Crystal brought Chaise over to my Aunt's house to visit. Which was nice of her. But then she realized we weren't going to be showering her with gifts or anything so she stopped being nice. She started refusing visitations and insisting that my brother pay child support through the courts (which he was giving her money without the courts). We visited a lawyer who gave us no hope even after we described the conditions of her home. Spent a few times in court, my brother gave up for a few months, then finally he has gotten re-involved again. Now he has visits ordered by the court every Tuesday, Thursday & every other weekend for a few hours each time. They are scheduled to go back to court on the second Thursday in June to re-evaluate how things are going & see if Cody can get more visiting in. Chaise will also be over a year old by then. In the meantime, Crystal has tried every "trick" in the book to get more money out of my brother:

-Maternity Payments: child support for the last three months of pregnancy. Her reasoning was that she needed money to get all the baby stuff in order. Funny, my brother does too but he doesn't get to ask her for money. The judge asked if he was willing to pay it, he said no, judge asked if he'd go half & Cody said fine. Judge ruled that he would pay $450 over the next 6 months versus the $900 she wanted all at once. Crystal was pissed.

-tried to get more than the $300/month that was ruled for child support based on my brother's income (my brother has maybe a 10th grade education & does manual labor for my Uncle for a living). Judge looked at the tax papers and said what he was paying was fair. So...

-she filed papers to have my Aunt's payroll audited to make sure they were paying my brother properly. Pain in the butt for my Aunt, but no changes were made.

-Then she asked for "activity payments" to be set up 90% my brother and 10% her. First off, Chaise was like 6 months old so what kind of activities does he do? Secondly, the judge ruled that they both earn about the same amount of money so no they will split any activities 50/50. She didn't like that either.

-She also wanted my brother to pay for daycare so that she could spend time going back to school and she wanted my brother to pay for her to go back to school. The major flaw I see with this is that my 20 yr old brother with a 10th grade education is suppose to pay for a 25 yr old girl who has some college to go back to school? Maybe he should ask for her to pay for HIM to go back to school. Anyway, i'm not sure if she's filed any official paperwork but I know he isn't paying anything extra at this point.

That's about all the ones I can remember. When Chaise was newly born, my brother mentioned getting a paternity test and Crystal freaked out. As a guy who had only been with a girl a few months, I know I would have done a test just to feel 100% that the kid was mine. Especially when I had no say in naming the baby & then she was being so difficult about the whole thing. My dad & I feel that even if only 1% of you wonders if it's yours, you should do the test to be sure. If the results come back that it's yours, great now you have no surprises down the road and you can feel more confident about fighting for your kid & his rights. However, if you find out it's not yours, then you've saved yourself the pain of bonding with a child that isn't yours and the woman knowing and manipulating you about it. Plus you have taken away her power to hold that possiblity over your head.

One of my friends, Danielle, let me know that you can actually order paternity kits online. Basically a lab sends you some cotton swabs and you send back one with the kid's salvia & one with yours. Then in five business days you know the results. The results don't hold up in court as there isn't a proper chain of evidence, but the way my dad & I figure is that if you get the results and it's his kid then you know 100% and Crystal is never the wiser that you did it so she doesn't have a chance to be pissed off. Then if she ever tries to pull the whole "maybe it's not your kid" down the line, you can be confident that it is. If you get the results that it isn't his kid, then you can go the proper more lab based root (& more expensive) and who cares if you piss her off because you have nothing to lose at that point.

So I googled "paternity kits" and got LOTS of results. I went with the one called www.whozthedaddy.com because it was a little less costly ($189) and the lab is based out of Edmonton so a little more local for us. My dad was here last week so he slapped down his credit card and I ordered it for him. Now, the next time my dad goes down to visit (scheduled in June) they can do the swabs and we should know for sure. You can probably expect a blog either way with the results!