Is he the uncle or father? Please help…advice needed.
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She probably is after the social security. So what? She’s raising your granddaughter and kids aren’t cheap. Tiffani, I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child. The pain is surely overwhelming but it seems to have made you blind. Your blood is boiling because she robbed you of knowing about this child? You have no right to this child. Zero. The sliver of opportunity you have is going to vanish if you don’t let this go. You seem to be twisting yourself in knots to lay blame on this woman. Why? Your sons both slept with her within a few weeks. We know the problems your living son has with drugs and crime. Was your other son similarly troubled? Obviously he had something going on. Can you really blame her for staying away from that? Your living son can’t pay child support and clearly doesn’t want to. Could your deceased son have done better? Did either of them have positive qualities or material support to offer a baby? I would be grateful for that social security. It’s giving financial assistance exactly as it’s meant to. Definitely seek therapy. There’s no shame in talking through your pain. I hope you find some peace because you would be well advised to let this issue go.
Your granddaughter needs and deserves financial support. The social security payments will help to feed, shelter and clothe her. How could you possibly find it wrong for her to receive what she deserves.
If her mother felt the need to protect her from your sons being involved in her life then she put the needs of the child ahead of your sons. She did what her daughter needed. Your sons don’t sound like they could have been their either emotionally or financially. If you didn’t know your granddaughter it is because of your sons. Don’t blame the mother of your granddaughter. Also, you don’t really know whether your deceased son knew something about a daughter but kept it a secret. You are saying that both of your sons managed to have sex with a woman and yet neither knew that she gave birth to a daughter and neither considered the timing important or significant. Don’t blame the mother for how badly your own sons have acted. She isn’t perfect but neither are your sons. The child is innocent. Put her needs first. The mother sounds very wary about allowing your family into her child’s life. That is a mother protecting a child from harm. That is her job as a parent.
Please try to talk to someone because it is so much to deal with.
None of that matters.
This is what matters:
You have a granddaughter
She is the last living link to your deceased son
She, as all children do, needs support
Financially and emotionallyYou are robbing yourself from knowing her now, because you are so blinded by your misguided anger at this woman. That’s the real tragedy here. You are letting these emotions further destroy any hope of a relationship with her and your grandchild.
Instead of commenting on this post, you should be calling therapists, grief counselors, or groups for parents who’ve lost their children. You need help.
Carolann —
I think we all feel sadness for Tiffany and want her to find comfort from the on-going pain of the loss of her son. However… scapegoating the mother of her granddaughter is not fair and it’s not productive — it will keep her separated from her granddaughter and it won’t ease her pain from losing her son. Time and grief therapy will have to deal with that. The negative pushback comes from the attacks upon a young mother who seems to be doing what she thinks is right for her infant daughter and who had zero reason to trust either of Tiffany’s sons. It also was pushback against Tiffany’s expressed belief that the baby’s mother had it in her power to prevent the death of son #1 and to save son #2, but refused to do so out of blind selfishness. Not true. She had a child to protect. She couldn’t save the two sons. In any case, if you want women to treat your sons well, your sons have to treat women well and have their lives in order.Tiffany can help her living son. With problems of addiction and multiple convictions, recovery is an on-going thing. There is no ‘cured’ of addiction; maintenance is an on-going group. If she has influence over her son, then instead of pushing him to go to court to require genetic testing, she needs to encourage steady participation in a sobriety program and steady employment. Those are the primary things and should come ahead of his obsession (and hers) about which brother is the biological father of this little girl. I think therapy would help this son. He likely is suffering severely from his brother’s death. The loss of a brother is a terrible thing. I suspect that he also is feeling a lot of guilt. Having sex with your brother’s gf/fwb/whatever is a very shitty thing to do. Thinking that this woman is the mother of his brother’s child must make that guilt even worse. That might be why he is hoping so strongly to see proof that his brother isn’t actually the father. Because of all of this, Tiffany needs professional guidance in how to help her son. A group for parents of addicted family members is something she should seek out. In the meantime, Tiffany, please chill about this quest for which brother is the father. I can’t see how this can possibly help your son or your granddaughter or you.
Tiffani, your misguided anger at the mother of your granddaughter is going to bar you from the kid’s life forever. You love your sons, so you put their welfare before this woman’s welfare. Well, she loves her daughter and put her daughter’s welfare before your drug-addicted, in-and-out-of-jail son(s?). As she should have.
Your potential relationship with your grandchild is entirely dependent on the mother graciously letting you into the child’s life. At this point, I would certainly not let you in if I were her.
Your son could have a nice uncle-niece relationship (which is all he is probably capable of at this point anyway. He’s certainly in no rush to try and provide for a child). You could absolutely destroy that possibility by demanding tests and turning out to be WRONG—because uncles and grandmas who don’t even want to LOOK at their grandkids don’t have any rights whatsoever. That’s a risk you shouldn’t be willing to take.
Tiffani, I’m very sorry about your son and the situation you find yourself in, but you are missing out on what is really important here: you have a granddaughter! How amazing and what a blessing. You really need to reframe the situation in your mind this way and let go of the misguided anger you have towards her mother, regardless of the truth of your granddaughter’s paternity. A grief counselor has been suggested several times, and you should really follow that advice.
FWIW, I look extremely similar to my grandmother, who is without a doubt my grandma and not my mom. It always makes my heart stop a little when I look at photos of her as a young woman. That’s just how genetics work. And I’m honored to be so similar to her in looks and personality because she was an amazing woman.
Take all the love you had for your son, and give it to your granddaughter. What better way to honor his memory?
I am sorry, but I still don’t believe the mother of the child is entitled to the SS benefits of someone if they aren’t the child’s father. I find it suspect of the mother to come out if the woodwork only because a she found out about the death of a possible father. And then to flat out refuse to have a regular dna test.
I have been a single Mom without child support, so I have been there. Does not mean she is entitled to SS of a man who wasn’t the father and NONE of the people involved know for sure. If the mother were so certain she wouldn’t be afraid of testing the living brother. She is purposely avoiding this because she knows the living brother may be the father.
The mother does not know for sure who the father is, how could she if she slept with both of them?
And it would be nice if the addicted son had a child to do better by, maybe he would. If you talk to former addicts and ask why they quit, many of them will tell you they did it for the love of a child or Grandchild. This does happen. This guy would also be given some legal incentive to pay child support. Child support informant is very good depending on the State. (Unfortunately)
I think all of you are being ridiculous and if you were the Grandmother you would want to know also. No one here could possibly understand if they haven’t been there.
I am sorry for the struggle of the mother, but she made the choice to be a single mom…no one forced it upon her. She doesn’t deserve SS if he isn’t the dad. That would be SS fraud which takes money from someone else.And so the mother is also telling her daughter that her father is dead, when he may actually be alive? How messed up is that? A living dad is still better even if he had issues he needs to work on.
I’ll bet if the SSA knew there was a possibility the brother could be the father they would make him get tested.
@carolann No one is suggesting the mother of the girl should submit a fraudulent social security claim… The mother was never married to the father, and likely never put his name on the birth certificate, so she’s going to have to prove it in court somehow, and I’d bet that’ll involve a DNA test. Maybe the mother of LW’s grand child IS lying and looking for financial assistance. It’s possible and we don’t know her and can only guess at her current motives. I don’t think the child should be used as a pawn to get anyone to whip their character into shape, personally. Regardless, the mother didn’t write in, the grandmother did, so our advice is geared toward her. And she needs to take care of herself and work through her grief so she can find joy in the fact that she has a newly discovered grandchild.
carolann, I think YOU are being ridiculous with this assertion: “If you talk to former addicts and ask why they quit, many of them will tell you they did it for the love of a child or Grandchild.”
If you talk to the CHILDREN of frequently incarcerated addicts (calling him a “former” addict is a pipe dream at this point), they will tell you that being around parents who are not stable and are on drugs made their lives hell. They blame themselves when their parent relapses. They can’t trust or count on their own parent.
So why in the hell do you expect a single mother to invite a jailbird druggie and his angry mother into her child’s life? Why do you assume the only person with any sense in this story is the liar—just because a mother grieving her dead son (why is he dead? Since Tiffani won’t say, I have to assume drugs or crime) WANTS her to be a liar?
@Carolann They have an avuncular DNA test that says there is a 99% chance that the brother of the deceased is the uncle of the girl. The court accepts that as proof of paternity when there are only two brothers. Unless there is another brother who could possible be the father the deceased brother has been proven to be the father of the girl. That isn’t fraud. She has gone the legal route to do this properly. It is just that the grandmother and uncle want to think about how it might be different.
I guess they could ask if the company would certify the living son as the uncle if he was actually the father.
Skyblossom- my understanding of an avuncular DNA test is that it compares “the statistical likelihood that the alleged aunt/uncle is the biological aunt/uncle of the child versus being unrelated to the child.” Meaning a result of 99% means that they are 99% sure the child is related to the person being tested with uncle relationship being the minimum criteria. It doesn’t differentiate between uncle or father. It just says there’s a 99% chance this guy is an uncle RATHER than this guy is not related. Not rather than this guy being the father.
