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Protecting your rights as a father is very important. If your girlfriend, wife or partner is considering relinquishment, you need to know your rights. Immediately. Possibly yesterday. One of important thing to know about in order to protect your rights in some states is called a birth or putative father registry. States are beginning to enact these to help adoptions go more smoothly. They claim that they also help fathers, however, their lack of advertisement can cause fathers to lose their rights before they knew they had any.
Let’s start with defining a putative father. A putative father is a man that is not married to a child’s mother, before that child was born and has not been established as the father of said child in a court of law. A putative father will also have to state that he will take financial responsibility for the child.
In order to find out if your state has a putative father registry, start by contacting either the Department of Vital Statistics or Department of Human and Family Services. One of these should be able to help you find where to register. If you are in the military you may have other protection and obligations under the Sailor and Soldiers Relief Act. A list of registries can be located here.
Why should you seek out a putative father’s registry? Simple, if you want your rights as a father to be protected you need to do everything you can to protect those rights. Many of the registries do not consider ignorance of the pregnancy or birth reason to not register. So what does that mean? Every time you have sex with a woman you should register, otherwise you will lose your rights in that state. This seems extreme of course, but if you are serious in protecting your rights you will do what the law says. (Now you see why I said that they can work against fathers as well.)
Otherwise protecting your rights will come down to being notified by the mother of the pregnancy and birth. If you are aware of the pregnancy, you must do everything in your power to stay in touch with the expectant mother, help with medical bills, visit with her regularly, and be prepared to pay child support should she decide to parent. Actively doing these things will help protect your rights and show that you are an involved parent should you want to parent if the mother does not and you would want custody of the child.
Remember as an expectant father your rights are important too. Contact a lawyer if you need to, most consultations are free and you can get some legal advice on your rights in your specific state. You can also contact legal aid for free or low cost advice. Don’t allow your rights to be trampled.
