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Fathers Battling Injustice
Fight for baby Liam
Posted By: Dave4Ashley
Date: Thursday, 19 October 2006, at 10:15 a.m.
Saskatchewan father wants to raise the child his ex-girlfriend gave away
Siri Agrell, National Post
Published: Thursday, October 19, 2006
The photographs of baby Liam are posted on a Web site, uploaded there by a Saskatchewan woman who has raised the boy since the days after his birth at the request of his biological mother -- who decided she could not care for him herself.But the site is also where Liam's biological father, Rick Fredrickson, saw him for the first time, after months of trying to win custody of the child that DNA tests prove is his.
"This was my introduction to my son," said Mr. Fredrickson, who has never met the baby in person and found the pictures as a result of Googling the child's caregivers' names.
The Web site is simply one facet of a bizarre and complex custody battle in Saskatchewan, which pits Mr. Fredrickson and the rights of a father against the couple given custody of the baby by his former girlfriend, and who claim he was nothing more than a "sperm donor."
On Nov. 13, a pre-trial will begin in a Saskatoon court to establish who will win the right to raise Liam, who is now almost six months old, but the dispute has already escalated into a public -- and intensely personal -- battle.
And although Mr. Fredrickson has never met his son, the custodial parents have inquired through their lawyer as to whether he is interested in making child support payments.
"It's entirely common situation where the father admits paternity and does not have custody that he's got an obligation to pay child support," said Dale Blenner-Hassert, a lawyer representing the Rollers. "It's not about to whom it goes, but that it's for the support of the child."
Mr. Fredrickson, however, says he has no plans to send money to "a third party when I have been saying all along that I want to bring him up myself."
Liam was born on April 26, 2006, at the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon.
His mother, Oriole Bird, had been in a relationship with Mr. Fredrickson that had ended the previous November. She had never told him she was expecting a baby.
Instead, she arranged a custody and guardianship agreement with Brian Roller and his wife, Nicola Sherwin-Roller, a married couple she knew who live in nearby Prince Albert, Sask., and who are unable to have children of their own.
The custody arrangement, which legal experts say is a precursor to formal adoption, awarded them the right to raise Liam as their own, collect the federal child tax credit and even apply to change his last name to their own.
The agreement was dated April 27, 2006, the day after Liam's birth. It stated that "the biological father of the child is not known."
But court documents show that Ms. Bird did know who the father was, and that on April 23, Mr. Fredrickson had found out as well, through a phone call from her stepbrother.
After that call, Mr. Fredrickson says -- in interviews and sworn affidavits -- he did everything possible to establish his involvement in the child's life.
He tried to make contact with Ms. Bird, but she would not take his calls, and so he communicated to her family that he and his new fiancee were willing to raise the baby.
Link below for more....
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=bfd476c1-161d-4036-9f15-5b8c7d62abf5&k=52644
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