Lol already getting that. And yes you are right she did choose him, but apparently he's really went on a downward spiral of drinking etc. We are also fighting to get only supervised visitation for him as he has made a multitude of "questionable" parenting choices.
Well then the best thing that can happen to the child is for dad to get help. I would spend as much effort trying to get him help as I would trying to restrict his access to the child unless the child is in danger in his care.
A parent has to be pretty bad, not merely make questionable choices, b/f courts will only allow supervised visitation. Even if he was driving drunk with the child in the car, all the courts are likely to do is restrict him from driving with the child in the car. Drinking at home with the child in his care is not likely to warrant supervised visitation unless he was drunk to the point he passed out and couldn't properly supervise a child and the child got hurt. Parents drink and get drunk while watching kids in their homes all the time and it isn't illegal. It only is a problem if the parent is so impaired it presents a danger to the child.
In my state the court actually uses their earning capacity 99% of the time.
Idk where you live but in California for instance, earning capacity has 2 components to it - earning potential (ability) and opportunity. The former is how much you could earn if you could get a job based on your qualifications and the latter is the likelihood you could get such a job. If a parent has a drug or alcohol problem that prevents them from being hired in a particular industry they are qualified to work in, for instance because they were fired from their last job b/c of being drunk on the job and now no one in that industry would hire them, well their earning capacity in that industry is zero despite them having earning potential.
So believe it or not, the fact that a parent has a drug or alcohol problem actually can hurt the other parent's case when it comes to imputing income. Like I said before, the best outcome for everyone - you, your fiance, the child and the child's father - is for the child's father to get help. Your fiance needs to make it very clear that she is not trying to punish the child's father for his alcohol problem, that she is pushing for him to get help and that any supervised visitation she is asking for is only temporary for the period of time until he can get treatment and show some progress.
Unfortunately, despite serious coaching, fiance didn't listen and got bulldozed in court.
I doubt it. You don't realize how bad a parent has to be b/f a court will order supervised visitation. And the child support is determined by a formula based on income. The burden to impute income rests with your fiance and that many times requires hiring vocational experts to testify. If she hasn't gone to those lengths, she got the result I would expect her to get.
That was actually a good thing. You are a legal stranger to this child. You are not even married to the child's mother yet. Judges HATE stepparents trying to interject themselves in custody disputes and you aren't even a stepparent. You and your fiance may think of yourselves as more than boyfriend and girlfriend but to a family law judge, you are nothing more than mom's boyfriend until you marry her.
Even after you are married, you have no place in a family court proceeding on custody and child support unless you are called as a witness or the proceeding involves termination of the bio dad's rights and a stepparent adoption. If your fiance's lawyer is telling her it is a good idea for you to be in the courtroom with her, that is bad advice. You have nothing at all to do with the proceeding and your presence will do nothing but harm her case by annoying the judge.
Support her emotionally, psychologically and financially, but stay out of the courtroom when she is b/f a judge in a custody dispute with the child's father.
