What Happens If Your Spouse Has a Child With an Affair Partner?

For every divorced couple, there is a couple that stayed married after confronting a similar obstacle to the one that caused the divorce couple to divorce. Disagreements over parenting are, by nature, self-limiting problems; children eventually age out of the issue over which the parents were at loggerheads. At your child’s graduation, ask whether the temperature of the baby bottle really mattered. Likewise, once you get a new job, file for bankruptcy, inherit your parents’ house, or otherwise find a resolution to your financial crisis, the resentments associated with it eventually fade. Infidelity is one of the most difficult challenges in marriage to overcome, because it involves a breach of trust, but you will sometimes find people who stayed married for decades after one or both spouses cheated. Conceiving a child during an extramarital affair is often a deal breaker, though. An affair that results in the birth of a child does not affect property division issues, but it might affect issues of child custody and child support, depending on the child’s legal paternity. If you are getting a divorce after your spouse had a child with an extramarital affair partner, contact a Boca Raton child support lawyer.

Matters of Legal Paternity

According to Florida law, when a married woman gives birth, her husband is the child’s legal father. A DNA test showing that someone else is the child’s genetic father does not change the husband’s legal paternity status. A Florida couple divorced after the wife had a child with the man she had been in a relationship with before marrying the husband; she subsequently moved from Florida to Georgia to live with the child’s father. When the couple divorced, the husband terminated his parental rights; therefore the parties did not draft a parenting plan, and the husband did not have court-ordered parenting time or child support obligations. The genetic father then went through the voluntary acknowledgment of paternity process in Georgia.

Equitable Distribution Still Applies, No Matter Why the Marriage Broke Up

The family courts view divorce as the breakup of a financial partnership. Therefore, the divorce cannot become final until the parties sign a marital settlement agreement (MSA) outlining the division of marital property. If the parties cannot reach an agreement, the judge decides at the trial how to divide the couple’s property. Florida follows the rule of equitable distribution, which means that, when judges divide marital property in a divorce trial, they decide on a case-by-case the fairest way to divide it. An extramarital affair, even if it results in a child’s birth, does not change the equitable distribution of marital property.

Contact Schwartz | White About Disputes Over Child Support

A South Florida family law attorney can help you resolve matters of property division and child custody if your marriage ended because of an extramarital affair.  Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.

Source:

scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2427218493973792880&q=divorce+boyfriend&hl=en&as_sdt=4,10&as_ylo=2015&as_yhi=2025