1. He's not going to take your baby.

I've never heard of a man who didn't threaten custody when faced with the prospect of child support. It's so common as to be cliche, in fact. But the truth is, it just doesn't happen. In fact, most men don't even follow through with this threat. And the ones who do? Nine times out of ten they get shot down in court.

2. Child Support and Visitation are two very different things.

It's not a pay for play system. Just because he pays child support, it doesn't automatically give him rights to see your child. Conversely, you have no right to prevent him from seeing your child because he's late with the cheque.

3. Just because you have the kid, that doesn't mean that you have custody.

Unless you have a legal document stating that you have custody of your child--and something that you and the father of your baby worked out yourself doesn't count--you don't. Well, you do, but you don't have sole custody of your child, which a completely different thing. When you have what's called de facto custody, it's understood that you are the legal guardian of your child and that you make all the decisions, etc. But it's not an iron clad thing, and it won't protect you or your child should the father chose to pick her up after school or not return him at the end of a scheduled visitation. Without a court order granting you custody, he's consider to have equal custodial rights. And what that means is, if he takes your child without your consent, it's not kidnapping. The police will not be able to do anything to get your baby back, and your only recourse will be to take him to court.

So, how do you guard against that scary possibility? For starters, don't ignore the importance of gaining legal custody of your children. And, it's a very, very bad idea to allow unsupervised visitation if you don't have a custody order in place.

4. Court is always the preferred option

I've never heard of an FOB (that's Father of Baby to you non single mom types) who wanted to go to court. Outside of the aforementioned threats, that is. Generally though, once the blustering over the child support is over, most FOBs move on to a theoretically amicable model wherein you work everything out between yourselves and save yourselves the expense and hassle of a court date. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Except for the fact that an agreement like this is pretty much worth the paper napkin its written on and nothing more. In addition to the aforementioned custody issue, there is nothing to stop a man from simply deciding to stop paying child support under this model. And anyone who has been left high and dry while pregnant or with a new baby should already be more than familiar with just how much weight "but he promised!" carries in the real world.

5. No, you don't get a say in who he's seeing now.

Chances are, your ex is going to move on. And even if you were totally over the relationship, chances are you're not going to like it. Not because you harbour secret warm fuzzies about him and secretly want him back, but because the idea of some other woman spending time with your baby will make you mental. You'll probably want to put conditions on how much contact the new woman can have with your child, and natural inclination will probably be "not at all." Get over it. You don't get to control who he sees or how much contact she has with your child any more than he gets to dictate to you about your social life. That's not to say that you have to allow some random chick to play mommy with your child. But you do have to be mature and respectful about it and hopefully realize that so long as the people in it are positive influences who have your child's best interests in mind, the more people in her village who love her and want to support her, the better.

So, there you go, five of the most common issues for single moms, all in one convenient post. Hopefully, you'll never need them (which is not to imply anything negative about single motherhood, but just to acknowledge that many women do not go into their pregnancies planning to do it on their own in a potentially combative situation). But if you do, hopefully they'll serve you well.