I'm sorry for all of the misspellings, and the part where it says "he refused to sign" is supposed to be "she refused to sign"

First of all, my sympathies for all the grief and angst your family is enduring. I read your first sentence and knew where the story was going. Why is it so impossibly hard to make young adults see the ‘red flags’ which invariably end in hot mess situations?

he definitely needs a lawyer.

parents’ good advice might be rejected b/c it would mean (for the young adult child) that they have to admit they were wrong, so their listening ears remain shut. Your advice should never reflect an ‘I told you so’ vibe b/c nobody wants to hear that, no matter how true.

Do keep in mind that WE are not screwed. Your son and wife are the ones screwed as they got into marriage like it was buying a video game.

best advice is to let them solve it themselves but sneaky me would want to resolve the paternity question first and foremost. It would change the whole scenario for your son.

Wishing you the least painful resolution to this situation.

Well, my son won’t ever do a paternity test, and honestly it probably wouldn’t matter, because he is the father of record. They were married when she was born, she’s two and a half and knows him as daddy. You have no idea how little we care about genetics. If we knew that he knew, if it had been his choice, we wouldn’t care. We only care if he is being taken for a fool. There is a grandparent paternity test now, that claims is 99.999% accurate. We are thinking about getting it just to know, either way. My husband says he’s sure she’s not his, he just doesn’t want to tell our son. I’m hanging on to that 1% I want to be wrong. I love her and I will always love her. If we do the test, we will never tell.

Our son is in a similar situation. He and his wife did get divorced and both have remarried.

Our grandson is now 8. He does not have any physical characteristics of my son or my family. For a very long time, DH and I were almost certain he was not our son’s biological child. But our son never ever considered a paternity test - at least that we know of. Grandson now has some behavioral characteristics and mental abilities that are similar to my son’s.

Bottom line: my son considers him his son, no matter what. There’s more to being a daddy than biology.

I agree with you. Our son is technically my stepson, but he IS my son. I got him when he was 16 months, and we always had custody. He’s mine. We are closer than he and his birth mother are. But it was my choice. I knew what I was doing. Nobody tricked me and then tried to take me for all I’m worth. Spousal support?!?! Ack! Yeah I’m acting like a protective mama bear. I’m glad I found this forum to air these fears and thoughts. I feel like a lion stuck in a cage, going back and forth with worry.

I understand your pain. Believe me, I certainly do.

It was really hard for us not to try to “fix it.” We couldn’t. Plus it wasn’t ours to fix. Really tough.

They drew up a separation agreement without a lawyer? Or does she have a lawyer and he's unrepresented? Either way, he needs to get a lawyer immediately. Divorce laws vary from state to state and the final "deal" will depend on a number of factors, including how motivated the couple is to get things finalized, how readily each party will agree to compromises, the quality of legal representation, etc. However, without a lawyer to guide your son with respect to laws and precedents regarding things like mutual property, alimony, etc., it is entirely possible that he will end up giving his ex far more than he might have been required to give her had he been properly represented from the get-go.

As for the question of paternity, while I agree that there is much more to being a parent than DNA, if there is a question, IMO it is extremely unfair to the man who may be the biological father NOT to find out. What if he wants to be a father to his biological child and is being shut out? It may not change the outcome of a child support order but if it were me, I'd want to know.

I'd sneak a little DNA from my granddaughter and my son and do a little research. Watch him change his tune when he finds out the kid isn't his.

They drew up a separation agreement on one of those legal websites where you pay a relatively small fee and punch your numbers into the little formula and it spits out results based on your state’s laws. She didn’t like it because she wants more money, so she didn’t sign. She now has a lawyer who will be drawing up papers more to her liking. He is waiting until he gets her papers, and if he doesn’t like it, he will go to a lawyer.

Those calculators can be useful up to a point, but in my experience with my husband's divorce (in Missouri, so different laws, of course), a great deal was dependent upon the specifics of his situation. The lawyers and the judge went by the book when it came to determining the amount of child support, but no alimony was awarded despite the fact that his ex-wife was a stay-at-home parent prior to their divorce. The judge saw that she had more education than my husband and no handicaps that would keep her from working, and that the kids were in school full-time, and simply said "sorry, you are perfectly capable of supporting yourself, no alimony." Likewise, when it came to health insurance, neither of them had an employer policy at the time of the divorce so neither of them was ordered to provide health insurance - instead, the decree declared that they would split health care costs 50/50. And so on. Your son should NOT take whatever is drawn up by his wife's lawyer as a given.

Yes, he needs his own lawyer.

Are there ways that he can legally stop her from running up more bills in his name?

I know you are frustrated but all you can do is be there for your son and advise him only if he ask for advice.

Oh yes, to josephene's point, he needs to freeze all of his credit cards and start watching his credit report to make sure she doesn't try opening up any new ones in his name. It looks like Virginia has an "equitable distribution" law, but from what I understand, it can be very difficult to enforce repayment of debt by one spouse when the credit card is in the other spouse's name. I know when my husband got divorced, he was stuck with all of the unsecured debt from the marriage (luckily only a small amount of credit card debt), even though she ended up keeping most of the material goods, since the cards were in his name.

From the VA State Bar website:

"Virginia is one of more than forty states that has adopted an equitable distribution law for dividing marital property and debts in divorce. Marriage is considered an economic partnership. To determine a fair division of marital property and debts, Virginia law requires the following: that property and debts be classified as marital, separate, or part marital and part separate; that marital property and debts be valued; and that such marital property or debts be equitably divided based on the statutory factors in Virginia Code Section 20-107.3."

With all due respect b/c I know you’re more than mortified by this mess, you brought up the possibility of child not being a blood offspring, so there seems to be a BUT in the situation.

When child is an adult the first thing she might do is go looking for bio dad, so why not get it resolved right now? Nobody is saying the child is entitled to more/less love because of blood relation. But the reality is that $ is money and in the service, staff is underpaid so any relief your son can get wouldn’t be a bad thing.

again, I’d be sneaky and find out

here is a link for you :
Military Divorce you can google and find more sites as well. I advise your son to go to his installations JAG office and talk to them.

Joseph Corlett, LLC

I'd sneak a little DNA from my granddaughter and my son and do a little research. Watch him change his tune when he finds out the kid isn't his.

Unbelievable.

Sammy:

What is unbelievable, please?

Joseph, I think that Sammy is thinking that would be going a little too far. It is a lot of sneaking. I felt guilty for even thinking of doing the grandparents DNA test, and the only thing I would would be sneaking is a little sleeping-baby drool. I almost feel as if I would be invading her privacy, and we would have to be careful not to get caught. I' worried that my son would never forgive me. My husband is all for doing the DNA test just to be sure, but only if we don't get caught. If we do, he has already said he's throwing me under the bus! Lol. My husband is sure she's not our son's child, he doesn' have any doubts. I'm the one who has them, and it's this ningling, little nagging thing in the back of my mind, especially with the way his wife is acting. I think I am going to get the test, if only for my peace of mind. Once we know for sure we would never be able to tell a soul. We will not be able to see her until June at the earliest.

Not any sneakier than a girl telling her boyfriend/husband it is his child when there have been more than one mate in the picture and therefore some doubt. I said I’d do it but as grands, probably not our biz. The son should know, Esp. If marriage is rocky and negotiations are going south. Maybe your son is afraid of knowing, a legitimate emotion. But better now than when kid is 18 and wants to find real dad. Not being considered REAL after being in the child’s life will REALLY hurt.

As much as I’ve posted, truth is that Blue Online is absolutely 100% right. Best wishes.

Then there is this.

Me again - I posted above that we had a very similar situation with our son. Even though we are not sure our grandson is our son's biological child, we will NEVER sneak a DNA test to find out. What if he isn't? It would color our feelings for him and become a terrible burden for us to keep secret.

We love our grandson, and our son. Whether they are biologically related is not our business. Our son accepts the boy as his son, and they love each other. That's all that matters.

I agree that IlovetoCook’s son needs legal advice pronto. I also think he and his wife should not share a house, because that sets them up for more fights and gives the wife more opportunities to make nuisance calls to the police. In his shoes I would want a witness to any interactions with her.

I think the paternity issue is tricky. How will your son react if one day the (hopefully, ex-) wife yells, “Well you know you’re not his father!” or tells her son that the man he’s called “Dad” all those years isn’t really his dad, and the son goes and talks to your son?

A child deserves every medical advantage ascertaining genetics provides. If that makes a few adults uncomfortable, so be it.

I understand and appreciate your point, Joseph, but it’s not my place as a grandparent to prove/disprove parentage. If it’s to be done, it’s my son’s responsibility.

When the doctor says "...it could be genetic..." get back to us, please.

You’re right. You’re both right. This is a terrible situation, and there’s no “right for everyone “ answer. I wish that everyone was always honest and trustworthy, it would make life a lot easier.

I don’t honestly think that my soon-to-be ex daughter in law set out to deceive my son, if that is what happened. She miscalculated her due date. The doctor told her she was so many weeks pregnant, and that coincided with when she was with my son. But she was less pregnant than she thought, and the baby was taken early.

one time we were talking about when we bought our first house, and coincidentally got pregnant with our youngest child. It was at Christmas time. Well, DIL broke in and said, “no it couldn’t have been. You had to have gotten pregnant at the end of January/early February because his birthday is 10/12 and my baby......” and then she started counting on her fingers. She was getting upset. I’m a nurse, and I’m also one of those weird people who know when the egg implants that they are pregnant. Both of my pregnancies were diagnosed by the doctor at two weeks, and that’s including time to make the appointment. I explained this to her and also the fact that a pregnancy is 10 months, not 9, and that her baby was early. Her doctors told her this after they took the baby. If I really wanted to do the math, that puts the conception happening when my son was in Texas. There was a night that she told him she went to a party and got so drunk that she passed out in her car and slept in her car all night, so that’s why he couldn’t get ahold of her. My husband called BS on that, saying pretty girls don’t sleep in their cars.

And then they brought this beautiful olive-skinned baby to see us. She looked like my sister, who is half Greek. And then when I bathed her several times, I saw her Mongolian spot. The only reason I know about Mongolian spots is because of my sister. My mother told me it was from the Meditaranean ancestry. I never asked my son or his wife about it, and never called it to anyone’s attention, except my husband. They are both white so they never would have known what her spot signified, and she’s almost 3, so it’s gone now, which is good. But the area they lived in at the time ( Charleston SC) had a large Greek population.

Anyway, like I was saying, I don’t think my DIL set out to deceive my son, if that is what happened. She’s just really immature and not too smart. I think she didn’t realize until later that her math might have been off. When she did, she tried to play it off, saying that baby’s coloring is from the grandmother, because grandma tans, and that her round face (my son has a very long face) comes from my husband. Both my husband and I looked at her funny when she said that, because my husband has a rounded face due to corticosteroid use for his autoimmune disease. He couldn’t have passed it down to his granddaughter. But she has mannerisms like my son- facial expressions, the way she sits. I think that if we do a DNA test, it will come back that she is his, and it will quell all of the fears and doubts. I don’t know how two recessives made a dominant, but stranger things have happened.