She called me two days later.
“Law Office, this is Erik.”
“Yes, Erik, this is Ms. F_____ from the Putative Father Registry Office.”
“Yes, Ms. F_____, how are you?”
“I received your forms.”
“Great!”
“But I’m a little confused.”
“About what?”
“You listed yourself as the father on the forms.”
“Yes?”
“You‘re supposed to put the father‘s name on the forms.”
“I am the father.”
“Are you saying you got all four of these women pregnant?”
“Well, no. I haven‘t confirmed any pregnancy.”
“Then why are you signing the registry?”
“The statute requires me too.”
“Okay,” she simply said, and hung up.
She must not know about the statute, I concluded. Well, R.C. 3701.061 was an obscure statute. I searched my memory for other areas of law where a potential respondent had to ensure his own notice of a lawsuit that probably would not happen.
I then had a truly absurd thought: what if every unwed man signed the Putative Father Registry every time he might have fathered a child? We could hardly condemn such responsible action. But how would it affect society? At the very least it would vastly expand the Office of the Ohio Putative Father Registry. Paralegals like myself could go full-time into the putative father registration form business. Just send us the completed form and we’ll do the rest. We’ll even help you fill it out and get it notarized. Total confidentiality. Charge five bucks per form. Wow! And if we successfully lobbied for a federal registry, the sky would be the limit!
But that was for another day. For now, my initiation with the Putative Father Registry was complete. I would not be one of the “stupid” fathers. I had grasped my opportunity. No one would ever find me guilty of abandonment solely because I had not signed the Ohio Putative Father Registry. I would get notice of any adoption-related proceeding involving my child. Even if mom lied!
But wait. What if mom placed the child for adoption in another state--no one would search the Ohio registry! Would it be abandonment if I had not registered in the state where the adoption petition was filed, yet had signed the registry in Ohio, where I believed a potential adoption would take place? Yes. Because no one would search the Ohio Registry! Good lord, what good was grasping one’s opportunity if the opportunity could run away after one grasped it? Ignorance of the law was no excuse. But was I supposed to know the laws of other states? I had more work to do. I got out of bed and attacked the Internet.
Of the fifty states, at least twenty-one had putative father registries. Of those, at least four had an ignorance-of-the-pregnancy-is-no-excuse statute: Minnesota, Arizona, Texas, and Ohio. Well, it would be overkill to send my forms to those three other states. Or would it? Why wouldn’t a woman suffering from an unwanted pregnancy decide to visit Aunt Minnie in Scottsdale? Or go for the paid room and expense deal down in Texas? I’d start with Minnesota. Of the three states, it was the closest to Ohio.
I searched the Internet and found it immediately. The form was on line and didn‘t need to be notarized. I could print it, fill it out, and mail it in. The address was on the form. If I did not receive a confirmation letter in two weeks, I was to call 888-345-1726 Kudos! I began filling it out. Better safe than sorry. Although, from this day on, I would be revealing my entire sexual history to four--and maybe someday fifty--government workers across the United States.
I was feeling cocky. Yet annoyed. I still had received no response to my E-mail to ODJFS. So I wrote to them, asking them what they had done to comply with the promotion statute. I didn’t suppose they were obligated to tell me. But I was curious. After all, I lived in the capitol, less than a mile from Ohio’s legislative building, in fact, and I had never seen Putative Father Registry promotional materials outside the registry itself.
