Legal Question in Family Law in California

When the baby is near term, file and serve your paternity petition with a motion to establish custody and visitation. If she files a chid support rmotion, the support is based on incomes and timeshare with the child.

Unless you sign a voluntary declaration of paternity, or one of you goes to court as Ms. Kock suggests to establish paternity, you are under no LEGAL obligations to pay anything. Your moral obligations to support a child you created are between you and your personal spirituality. Once your paternity is established, however, the legal system will treat you exactly the same as divorced parents for purposes of child custody, visitation and support. As Ms. Kock said, the child support calculations are a complex formula based on incomes, certain deductions, and who has how much custodial time. Once there is a child involved it is also possible to get a stipulated find-work order issued to a non-working parent, and if they fail to comply, or if they refuse to stipulate to it, they will be imputed the income they could be earning for purposes o the calculations. With all those variables it is impossible to answer "how much would be the child support." Since you were never married you will not owe your girlfriend direct support, i.e. alimony, unless she can establish a binding promise from you to her to support her that would qualify for what is commonly called "palimony" under the case of Marvin v. Marvin. Situations where the Marvin case really applies, however, are pretty rare.