It’s stupid that this is still being talked about and people are posting misinformation for their followers seven years later, but I keep getting asks about it despite saying I’m not really around, so I want to make one post to fully sum up how child support, custody, paternity, and the legal system works. If you want to know why you should trust me over the larries who claim otherwise: You don’t have to. I can’t convince anyone to not believe what they would prefer to believe. But I did work for my state’s child support department for multiple years and I still have friends there to this day and in doing so, I had to know the laws in California as well for cases where parents live in separate states.
So first things first: Does Louis singing the birth certificate mean he is the father? Legally, in the eyes of the court, yes. And often, legality in the courts supersedes biological paternity. So let me break this down a bit. Usually, when a father is unknown or there is doubt in the paternity, the birth certificate does not get signed by a legal father. There is nothing stating a man’s name or signatures have to be on a birth certificate and very very often in cases of doubtful paternity, there’s not one. Names can always be added later: they can not always be taken off.
So you have three options for a father on a birth certificate. Option one, there isn’t one. Option two, the mother is legally married to a man who is then legally considered the father whether he signs the birth certificate or whether the baby is biologically his or not. This sounds ridiculous, but it happens more often than you think. In a situation where there is a legal husband and another biological father, if the biological father wants to have any custody/paternity/parental rights of the child, he will have to go to court. The same in the reverse situation where the legal husband does not want parental rights and therefore responsibility of the child. He has to take it to court.
And option three, the mother and father are not legally married, but the father signs the birth certificate. I’ll go purely based off California state law here. I’m not going to cite my sources because it’s one simple Google search away and I know most of y’all wouldn’t click on them anyway. Under California state law, for a man who is not married to the mother of the baby to put his name on the birth certificate, he has to sign a voluntary declaration of paternity or parentage. What that means is he has to sign a legal document that he agrees that the baby is his child and that he is accepting full responsibility of the child in exchange for parental rights such as custody and visitation. They also then can be forced to pay child support by the state. Honestly, this happens less than you think and the child support systems heavily favor the absent parent, whether it be man or woman. Because of this, in most situations, if a family can afford their own lawyers to handle child support privately, they will almost always do it this way instead. This is what Louis and Briana have chosen to do. That also means that even if a man is not biologically related to the child, he has still fully accepted legal responsibility as the father.
“But birth certificates are easy to change! He literally just needs to do a DNA test!” No. That’s not how it works. A lot of people, including biological fathers who want to get out of the responsibility of paying child support, think this is true, but it’s not. Once you have signed a voluntary declaration of paternity and put your name on a child’s birth certificate, you can’t just take it back. First of all, the signing of the document cannot be coerced. It also has to be witnessed by a notary if you sign it at any time outside of the hospital. It is not something that can be faked without being considered fraud. Once it is signed, genetic testing showing that the father is not biologically related to the child is not a valid reason in a court of law to undo the voluntary paternity. There are only two ways to undo this: File a form stating that you are rescinding the voluntary declaring of paternity within sixty days of filing it or challenging it in court. You might think “Oh, they’ll just challenge it in court then!”
They can’t. The only way to challenge this in court is to do so within two years of the date the declaration was signed. (If you were confused, Freddie is now six, so about four years too late.) Even within the timeframe, a father who wants their parental rights removed after signing this document would have to prove there had been fraud or coercion that forced them to sign in court. Not an easy task, but it could have probably been handled by a multimillionaire with a legal team at his side. But it didn’t happen. The timeframe passed.
So as of this point in time, there is Absolutely No Legal Way For Louis Tomlinson To Declare He Is Not The Legal Father of Freddie Tomlinson. Is it possible one day he will post a DNA test stating that the child isn’t his? Sure, I suppose, but it’s unlikely. People like to claim he has not gotten a DNA test because of sources like TMZ but refuse to acknowledge that family members of Freddie and other tabloids stated the opposite: That he had a DNA test done when Freddie was born and it came back that he is the father. They also try and claim his team denied having a DNA test. That’s not true. His team stated that the idea that he had not gotten a DNA test was “all part of media speculation” which, I think to almost anyone who is not a Larrie, sounds like a denial that the articles were telling the truth, not a denial of Louis getting a DNA test.
People like to point towards people like Drake and Tristan Thompson as signs of the “right” way for paternity scandals to happen, despite both men having very negative public images because of the way they handled their situations and humiliated their children and the women involved in the press. Louis and Briana handled things the way they should have: privately and in the legal system instead of in the public eye. In fact, both Louis and Briana made it clear they did not intend for the pregnancy to get out as quickly as it did, if ever. Unfortunately, someone (most likely a member of Briana’s family) leaked the news to the press for attention. That sucks! But it’s not weird or inconceivable. They’re a rich white Republican family in LA and they very clearly enjoy the attention, even if you exclude Briana herself.
Yes, the Jungwirth family sucks. Yes, Briana seems to have some really questionable parental views in regards to vaccinating her child. Yes, Louis lives in another country and cannot see his child as often as the Jungwirth’s do and doesn’t have primary custody. None of this is weird, even if it sucks. It appears that Louis is genuinely making an effort to be in Freddie’s life, even now when he is six years old and will definitely remember things like trips to England to spend Christmas with his father’s side of the family.
So when it comes down to it, if you genuinely believe that Louis is not Freddie’s father, you’re choosing to believe despite all the evidence to the contrary that Louis Tomlinson is a man who has committed illegal acts of fraud and exploited not just Freddie but multiple other children and people, up to and including getting them involved in a situation where they receive literal death threats, just to either stay closeted or to avoid having to go to court and possibly losing money in a case he would win because contracts forcing you to do things that are illegal (like fraud) are not able to be upheld in court. Not to mention how his management and company have changed multiple times now since Freddie was born so no one even has any idea who he would be being forced into this by.
I know this is super long and most likely will not get much interaction, but I want to get it all into one post that I can refer back to when I get asks about it in the future or so other people can share this with people who might be starting to genuinely question what they’ve been sold or held onto or convinced themselves of while they were a larrie. I know I can often be aggressive on this blog and the reasonings behind it are valid (at least to me, this blog was started due to the hatred that Larries, especially Amy, were throwing at Jay when she died, and so that bitterness as someone who lost their mother young has always stuck with me) but I also genuinely want people to see the other side that either gets blatantly lied about or not shared by Larries trying desperately to keep people on their side.
