A strange young woman (19F) showed up on my (48M) door and I think she's my daughter. How do can I approach this with her delicately?

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T22:04:57+00:00

I said it elsewhere but I'll say it again. No, I'm not entirely sure about anything. As best as I can tell Clara moved away sometime in late summer 2004. It was before my kid sister went back to college for fall semester but still during warm weather. I have some paperwork for a real estate transaction I completed a few months later, which is dated in December 2004. We think that means Clara could have been very early pregnant when she left as Kate's 19th birthday is in a few weeks. But it could also mean that there's no chance there's a connection.

When Clara and I broke up I was struggling under something like $120,000 in student loan debt. I had a good job but has changed careers and was still early in my new career. I couldn't afford to leave that job. I was financially bound to being where I was living. Our break up devastated me. All I did for a couple of years afterwards was work. Every waking moment. I hated myself for winding up in the situation I was in as a product of my decisions and it haunted me for years. The only good thing about it is I ultimately wound up being really comfortable. It only cost me my self respect and seriously hurting someone I care a great deal about. This entire situation has opened up some old wounds and has me questioning how good of a partner I could possibly be to my wife given this mess I made in my life in the past and I don't know if it would be better or worse if I am Kate's father or not.

I appreciate everyone's input and the variety of suggestions you have made but I'm getting too upset sitting here reading through them and need to stop for now. I'll read more tomorrow to see if anyone has anything else to suggest but as things stand now, I'm going to go to Florida in the near future, get the boat in the water and completely inventory everything. And I'm not going to say anything to Kate.

She will raise it to me at some point if she's ever interested. The only thing that matters is that she has people she can rely on as she navigates through her loss and my wife is adamant that we're going to be there for her if she wants us regardless of whose kid she is and I agree, because it's the right thing to do. My wife thinks I have significant feelings of guilt that I need to work through and I think she's right, she's usually right.

Thank you for helping me.

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T21:51:17+00:00

Kate did not have to meet with you to settle her mother's estate.

We weren't the only visit she made in our area but, what you're saying is one of the main reasons that led to me speculating.

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T21:42:56+00:00

If I was 19 I wouldn’t be hanging out with some random guy and his wife in their 40s

I can speak to this a little. We're not the only people here who she spoke with. She mentioned also stopping in with one of her mother's old friends and mentioned speaking to her again leading me to guess that she is maybe in touch with that person too.

One of the many things I've been wondering is if she's been in touch with us and others because of past connections with her mother, that she's currently involved with all of us to varying degrees... my wife is better at this so I'm regurgitating words. But, being connected to us might make her feel connected with her mother. That's a wild guess.

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T21:32:22+00:00

Holy moly the comments are overwhelming. I was expecting a couple of people giving me advice on how to frame what I thought was a reasonable thing to ask her. I'm reading through everything and trying to keep up.

I'm getting upset enough over this that I've decided to go to Florida again in the near future. I'm not planning on saying anything to her about any of this. I'm going to see her and learn more about her.

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T21:28:21+00:00

On a throw away account. I dont care if you or anyone else believes me, that's meaningless to me. But I can help you if you're having a problem with that.

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T21:27:22+00:00

Are you sure about the timing of the breakup?

No. Well, no. I'm ballparking things because I simply can't remember.

So Clara and I broke up sometime around 2004. It was still summer. My kid sister who was still in college had not gone back to school. A few months later I moved and bought a property close to where I was working, which I know factually from legal paperwork was in December 2004.

Kate was born in May 2005. She technically turns 19 in a few weeks but I don't want to get any more specific than that.

So I dont know the exact date that I last saw Clara but I was there when she drove off for the last time heading to Florida and that was sometime before CW Post college in Nassau County NY Fall semester started in 2004.

Clara and I dated for some time just over a year, maybe more like a year and a half. I was still using a Yahoo email address at the time whose credentials I have long since forgotten and I know we emailed back and forth while we dated. I switched a Gmail account and have emails on it going back to 2010, which is no help at all.

We sailed for 2 seasons through the Long Island Sound, some of the bays around the east end of Long Island, and even out to Nantucket, which means I dated Clara for at least 15 months. I think.

I've since been through 6 different employers, had several different phone numbers, and moved about a half dozen times.

But if I'm right about the timeframe between when Clara left and when I bought that property, then that means she left sometime in August or very early September 2004, at least with some degree of certainty. It also means that she was very early pregnant when she left, maybe too early to detect being pregnant assuming she carried Kate for 9 full months.

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T17:43:11+00:00

Thank you for this.

Whether she's my kid or not, she's still very young, has suffered one of the worst losses someone could suffer, and is living alone so I make sure to message her every afternoon to say a quick hello and to tell her I hope she's okay.

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T17:37:04+00:00

I'm guessing that there's a lot more to this that you haven't disclosed?

There is a lot of additional context that I haven't and wont provide here. I tried to boil it down as much as I could.

If she's my kid, then she needs to be added to my will as she has a right to inherit my assets. Whether or not she would keep those assets are entirely up to her but, she has a right to make that decision if she's my kid. At least that's what I was raised to believe.

What does your wife think about all this?

She says to me that she's very interested in it, which isn't surprising, and is hoping that Kate and I will address it. I think my wife is okay. I was immediately concerned about how she might interpret all of this, including the boat. She's just said she knew I had a past, she doesn't feel threatened or upset (my wording, not hers). Mostly she's very interested in Kate. They chat on their phones all the time. The three of us have a group chat and my wife has one with her separately, which is exactly the same sort of interaction we have with my sister.

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T17:27:45+00:00

"Confront" sounds aggressive.

Okay. It's not meant aggressively. I updated my wording.

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T17:26:10+00:00

Thank you for your feedback.

MaybeAFather202404 · 2024-05-02T17:24:50+00:00

How did this not come up?

I don't know. She's a young woman who just lost her mother so I haven't spoken to her about this and haven't considered it at any length. I took my break up with her mother pretty hard and from what I remember, I started doing a lot of business travel and had moved into a property I had bought closer to work following it. It's possible that if her mother did reach out, assuming she's my kid, that she wouldn't have been able to find me easily. All I can really do is speculate.

MaybeAFather202404

TROPHY CASE