Child Support Vendetta
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"CHILD SUPPORT VENDETTA IS A NON-FICTION BOOK ABOUT CHILD SUPPORT
AND WHAT I WENT THREW WITH THE COURT SYSTEM"
THESE ARE TOPICS I COVER IN MY BOOK, EXCEPTS FROM OTHER POINT OF
VIEWS!
My friend has 2 kids to his ex which he pays c/s to and she
remarried not long after they seperated and have no other kids, i had
one child to my ex partner and 1 to this relationship, i receive c/s
for my daughter and pay her private school fees sport fees and clothes
etc and always send nice outfits and money with my daughter when she
visits her father and or when he takes her out and i always offer to
give him money for it but he declines seeing he pays c/s, but on
otherhand my partners ex never sends clothes for the kids we have to
buy and supply everything and we have them alt weeks in the school
holidays and alt wk ends, since the c/s law changed this year we lost
our entitlement for ftb which we were entitled to for the 2 kids and
our large family supplement as in total we have 4 children, but also
our c/s dropped but a minute amount but didnt cover the ftb that we
lost....anyway since the laws changed and it took the mothers income
into affect so she quit her job and made her new husband work 7 days a
week, he has no kids. i think it is so unfair.. she cant supply
clothes for them and they go without at home and wear clothes that are
3 x too small and or have the same clothes 3 days in a row because
theres no clean clothes and shes a stay at mum,but yet she shaves her
hair and can afford to buy multiple wigs cos she had a britney spears
moment and replaced her whole makeup collection with chanel and buys
lite and easy meals weekly while the kids eat cheese and macaroni or
toasty sandwiches for tea.. i feel they should take the new partners
income into account as centrelink does once its a defacto relationship
why shouldnt c/s.
THE UNFAIR COURT SYSTEM
In the court of law, you are supposed to be innocent before
proven guilty. You are supposed to be given the benefit of doubt. Your
amendments and constitutional rights are to be used when situations
arises. But guess what, THE COURT SYSTEM DOESN’T CARE! When it comes
to the system when it is dealing with child support, all men are
created equal, “IN BEING GUILTY”! It doesn’t matter if you’re right
and she is wrong, the courts will 8 out of 10 times rule in favor of
the mother (which is the custodial parent)! There are many more good
fathers out there that don’t get recognized and gets punished because
of this misconception of fathers and the abuse of mothers. The courts
view a good father as one who pays his child support and a bad
deadbeat father as not paying his child support. Well what if a good
father is actually “BAD” and a bad father is actually a “GOOD” father?
Let me explain. A good father who pays his child support but doesn’t
and hasn’t spent any time with the child is considered a “GOOD
FATHER”. Now a bad father because he doesn’t have the financial means
to constantly provide for his child, but takes care of his child,
gives him love, care and emotional support is considered in the court
eyes a “DEADBEAT FATHER”! Now you tell me what is wrong with this
picture? The system is so greedy for money and blind that they don’t
even care about the child or you personally being there for your
child, only financially! The unfair court system ruins, confuses,
manipulates both parents and reward no good deadbeat mothers with
finances that 7 out of 10 times doesn’t go to the child!
MOTHERS AND FATHERS FIGHTING OVER MONEY PAYMENTS FOR THE CHILD
The same story echoed a dozen times through Room E8 of Manhattan
Family Court in a single day: fathers, pinched by the recession,
pleading for a reduction in child support.
A salesman at Saks Fifth Avenue who is estranged from his teenage
daughter said he feared he would be included in the next round of
layoffs expected at his store.
A man who had been laid off from a factory said he managed to find
work at Mets games, but for less pay, $9 an hour. Another man, on the
verge of eviction, begged for a break from his $315 monthly payments.
“Last week was my child’s birthday, and I couldn’t get him a
present,” he said, burying his head in his hands. “This is killing
me.”
Since January, Family Court in New York has been filled with urgent
requests like these, alarming judges and overwhelming calendars with
what are known as modification cases.
Similar patterns are unfolding across the country: In Clark County,
Nev., which includes Las Vegas, the district attorney’s family support
division has received an unusually high number of calls from parents
who previously paid diligently but are now having trouble.
The child-support office in Milwaukee saw a 20 percent spike in the
number of custodial parents seeking enforcement of support orders last
year, with most of the increase coming in the fall as the unemployment
rate there began to creep upward.
To explain why they can no longer pay as much per month, the parents,
typically fathers, cite layoffs, cutbacks in work hours and the loss
of homes to foreclosure. Presented with documentation of falling
incomes and rising expenses, judges often have little choice but to
grant the downward adjustments, even in the face of protests from
mothers struggling to support children.
Magistrate Matthew Troy, a stocky, gregarious man with a white
horseshoe mustache who is one of 15 judges hearing such cases in
Manhattan Family Court, said the decisions can be brutal. “It’s not a
trickle down — it’s a direct route,” he said of the effects,
especially in poor families. “Everybody who relies on the father gets
hit.”
The reductions force some families to apply for welfare for the first
time, while others become increasingly dependent on food stamps or
risk eviction when they come up short on rent.
“In many cases, it’s devastating,” said C. A. Watts, the director of
the district attorney’s family support division for Clark County.
“Some of the parents absolutely depend on that money coming in. It’s a
domino effect. The custodians need the money to feed and clothe the
children. If the money stops, it puts a burden on the custodial
parent, and they have to come up with funds another way. They’re not
going to let their children starve.”
The amount of child support varies based on individual family
circumstances, but New York State begins with these guidelines: A
noncustodial parent generally pays 17 percent of gross income for one
child, 25 percent for two children and up to 35 percent for five or
more children, as well as a share of child care, medical and education
expenses.
“We see everything,” said Peter Passidomo, chief of the state’s 125
support magistrates. “High income, low income, across the board. It’s
just like in an intact family where the income earner has lost the
job.”
Though Family Court in New York is open to the news media, names of
the parties are typically not revealed.
Judge Troy, who has been a Family Court judge since 1999, said that
in recent weeks he had seen a former Lehman Brothers executive whose
$7 million in stock had disappeared, leaving him unable to pay his
child support. And then there was the divorced couple whose combined
income had surpassed $400,000 — until they both lost their jobs and
were scrambling to figure out how to pay two private-school tuitions
on roughly $800 a week in unemployment benefits.
Most, though, are more like the man who went from a decent-paying
factory job to working in food service during Mets games in Queens.
Judge Troy lowered his monthly payment for his three teenagers to $50
per month, from $686. Otherwise, he feared, the father would be unable
to meet his obligation and face a more drastic punishment: jail.
“It wasn’t his fault he lost his job,” Judge Troy said. “I don’t want
to throw a guy like that in the clink.”
The Saks salesman, on the other hand, whose 19-year-old daughter was
asking for support for the first time, was ordered to pay $544 a
month. (New York allows child support to be paid for dependents beyond
age 18.)
In the case of the father who could not buy a birthday present for
his son, Mr. Troy agreed that $315 a month — or 23 percent of his
$16,640 salary — was too much. But the child’s mother, over
speakerphone from her home in Georgia, angrily protested that she was
already paying $1,800 a month for the child’s expenses.
“He is capable of getting another job,” she said. “I see no reason
for him to get any kind of modification of his child support.”
The judge ultimately took the woman off speaker, and instead spoke
quietly into the telephone to calm her down. He lowered the father’s
payments to $50 a month (about 4 percent of his gross income).
“Somebody’s got to make the call,” Judge Troy said after the hearing
had adjourned. “That’s the call I’m making.”
Mr. Passidomo said magistrates throughout the state have grown
increasingly concerned about the volume and breadth of the
modification requests. Upstairs from Mr. Troy, in Room 8C3, Magistrate
Sudeep Kaur said she sees herself as “very strict about reducing child
support,” but lately has had little choice in a spate of cases in
which fathers have come to her after losing their jobs.
“It really has to be something beyond their control,” she said.
Lisa J. Marks, the director of Child Support Enforcement in
Milwaukee, said her office has seen an influx of noncustodial fathers
who have lost jobs in sales, construction and the service industry.
“We have seen individuals who have had fairly good income, and it’s
not there any more,” she said.
“It’s really a teetering issue for child support offices,” Ms. Marks
said. “You have one party who is really desperate because they’re not
getting the full amount of support. And their expenses have increased,
and their hours are probably decreasing.”
On the flip side are the fathers, and “they don’t have a job at all
anymore,” she said. “You try to maintain fairness.”
The court will typically order fathers to pay a portion of their
unemployment benefits in child support. But if their unemployment runs
out, and they have no income, the court will temporarily resort to
what is called “open support,” Ms. Marks said. What that means, she
explained, is “you don’t have to pay any child support.”
DEADBEAT PARENTS
When a parent is ordered by the court to pay child support and
continuously fails to do so, he or she is commonly referred to as a
"deadbeat."
"Deadbeat parents" and "deadbeat dads" are not synonymous. Not all
deadbeat parents are dads! There are also many moms who have been
ordered to pay child support and have fallen behind, as you can see
from jurisdictions that post lists of their most wanted deadbeat
parents online.
Child support is completely separate from visitations. In the eyes of
the law, the parent who owes back child support payments still has the
right to visit with the child. Therefore, any parent who is in
distress over missing child support payments should take the steps
outlined above instead of withholding visitations. Refusing to allow
your child to visit with your co-parent because he or she has unpaid
child support could jeopardize your good standing with the courts.
HOW FATHERS CAN BECOME BETTER DADS AND THE UNFAIR
TREATMENT OF FATHERS!
The general perception of child support in non-intact families is
that, after divorce or other family court actions, fathers usually are
expected to maintain their own household and provide payments to
custodial mothers in their homes. The problem with this typical court
assignment is that it often restricts a woman’s ability to work full
time and, just as often, it places a hard budget burden on men who
don’t enjoy enough time with their children.
Several decades after the last feminist movement, the majority of
mothers do work outside the home today, either part time or full time.
Economic inflation, the cost of health care and the subsequent need
for day care, however, have outpaced the benefits of two-parent
incomes in most families, intact or otherwise.
Feminists often complain that gender bias and wage disparities in the
workplace prevent women from becoming self-sufficient and realizing
their full potential as contributing members of society. The larger
truth is that, if mothers were ordered to equal child placement in
most family courts, they would have much more time to achieve those
economic goals.
Family breakups are generally just as financially difficult for
fathers as for mothers. Women’s advocates often claim that divorced or
separated mothers are quickly reduced to poverty, while newly single
fathers enjoy large increases in their standards of living. Once
again, this is outright nonsense. The average, wage-earning father can
ill afford to maintain his separate household with wage deductions of
19 percent or more, as well as a share of medical and educational
expenses for his children.
Media reports refer to many fathers as “deadbeat dads.” Most single
fathers are either on schedule or at least making their best efforts
to pay their court-ordered obligations. Up until the recent,
nationwide economic collapse, the huge majority of these noncompliant
men were low-income parents who are most likely to be unreliably or
irregularly employed.
It’s doubly insulting to call a man a deadbeat dad in the public
arena. Those who use such angry, insensitive language don’t know the
complete history of his marriage, his divorce, his health status or
his employment. Like the N-word for black people or the B-word for
women, this term demeans his value as a father who loves and cares
about his children. It also implies that he’s a stereotype, no better
than all the other dads who won’t, or can’t, support their children,
especially in the current recession amid an employment market that’s
been steadily outsourcing jobs to places such as China, India and
Mexico for several decades.
It’s time to stop scapegoating fathers who, all too often, have lost
jobs with competitive wages and benefits to business forces beyond
their control. Non-intact families in the future will be much
healthier economically when both parents enjoy more equal time with
their children and, as a result, both mothers and fathers will have
the time to pursue worthwhile, self-supporting employment.
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