I believe we need to include the understanding that equal treatment under the law also requires equivalent fact sets. Some circumstances are inherently unequal. What a mother and a father provide a child are not identical or interchangable. The mother might claim that while all the effort you had to make was to pay for support while she spend years of time and effort raising the child and perhaps making other sacrifices. The child might ask where was the equal treatment of growing up without his physical father?

I believe your choice in the matter came in the moments leading up to conception. After that there is no real equality in the facts. The judge has a duty to society and the dependant child to do what is in his or her power to make the best of a less than ideal situation. At that point the judge probably doesn’t really care who thinks the situation is fair other than the child, who most likely never will.

Most of us who have been to court have been disabused of the idea that what happens there is very often fair. I’m sure it felt very unfair to have been lied to and perhaps used in the first place. One of the great hazards of youth is we rarely understand the potential consequences of seemingly trivial acts, even when we think we are acting responsibly.

Under the circumstances I think you deserve acknowledgment for having supported the child financially.


Mark