Ending Child Support

Just break out the violins!

If this is the same thing that I read about a while back, then it's truly frightening. If this is the same thing, what it does is give you instructions on how to TERMINATE YOUR PARENTAL RIGHTS. If you're not legally your kid's father, you don't have to support him! Hurray! Now you have legally severed your relationship to your child and your child is essentially fatherless. What a great solution!

Danna

I think this is a perfect example of how people react when you force them up against a wall with no where to turn. Child support was only originally designed to be ordered in the cases of poverty stricken children, child support is unfair and I don't see any reason why a custodial parent should necisarily be given the money for the child, the non-custodial parent should be allowed to spend what ever amount they deem appropriate each month. I believe each parent must take care of the bills for their own home, and expenses. One should not assume that they rae entitled to the same standard of living as before the divorce, because it comes at the expense of deminishing the standard of living of the parent who pays the money. This cannot be equal protection under the law, and that ladies and gentle men is not fair.

The system is corrupt. Stop paying into this corrupt system. Union is power. Let the system collapse. The two parents should decide on their own how much children need and resources available.

The money is not going to help the children, but to support mommy's lavish lifestyle.

Women, if you can't or don't want a man in your life, don't go bitching about it. Get off your lazy asses and find a job.

Fathers - give your boys the best gift ever - a vasectomy.

Men - avoid single mothers like the plague. They gained the experience and will turn it against you.

Uncle Sam - passport revocation on overdue child support is wrong. We are citizens of the U.S. The passport is an act that reflects citizenship. It has nothing whatsoever to do with child support, just as child visitation is claimed not to have anything to do with child support. No passport, no taxes paid.

We will revolt over these breaches of constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and the price will be high.

All you ever seem to hear about is deadbeat fathers in the news, and all these new laws that the crook Blagojevich came up with to further screw the working father. Yes there are alot of guys out there that don't want thier kids, and don't want to pay child support, but there more that do. I had a great relationship with my little girl who just turned 13. Since 1999 I was ordered to pay $154 twice monthly, but somewhere along the line I started paying $266 twice per month for whatever reason, although the origional order for $154 twice monthly still remains. I didn't mind paying more because she was supposedly getting taken care of. My ex hasn't had a job in years, she claims to have all these medical and mental problems, and is always high on medication, slurring her words etc. in 2000 she attemped to overdose on medication and spent a week in a hospital. The police who responded to the scene said my daughter, who was then very young, answered the door and said her mommy was on the bathroom floor. She begged me not to take my daughter away from her so I didn't. As the years went by she became more strange and vindictive and several times she tried to withhold visitation from me and I had to take her to court to have my visitation enforced. A year ago I moved to Michigan for work and of course this put a strain on our relationship but my daughter understood why I had to move and we still talked alot. As I was working at a new place my child support was no longer getting deducted from my checks on a regular basis so the checks I sent became a little to irregular for my ex to continue her lavish lifestyle. About a year ago she went to one of 10 million free legal services for women (there are NONE available for fathers) and she had the child support enforced and garnished from my wages. Funny thing is instead of enforcing the $266 twice monthly they enforced the $154 which was what was on the court order. However they took her WORD and decided to say I was over $1000 delinguent and added additional money from the deductions. I pulled the transcropt of total payments from SDU and it clearly reflects I have been paying $366 twice monthly since 1999. A total of about $67,000 when I should have only paid $27,000 at the rate of $27,000. So clearly I have been over paying but none of that seems to matter to these crooks. I filed an appeal 4 months ago and haven't heard anything. Furthermore about 6 months ago my daughter suddenly stopped talking to me, wont take calls, won't return calls, not only from me but my family and her mothers. Her mom is so nuts she's told her all kind of stuff and in isolating her from the world. I can't afford a lawyer so there's nothing I can do. Please... If you can relate, or you feel this is an injustice please spread this around. Women like this need to be locked up. Now because of this my daughter will grow up screwed up.

I think the idea of having a non-custodial parent pay certain bills, rather than handing over cash directly, is a great one. Perhaps this is something states should do through a third party depository.

My husband (before we were married) fathered a child to a woman who shortly thereafter married another man and in 3 years paid over $75,000 in child support (taken directly from his paycheck) while the mother got evicted, on average, every 8-10 weeks for both failure to pay rent and for offensive behavior. We weren't upset about the money until we found out that the mother wasn't using it for basic needs, but was spending it on herself.

Finally we were able to secure legal assistance to prove the mother was unfit and was denying us visitation rights, and found out that the mother had had another child born during those three years who was removed for neglect; had been arrested 3 times (and convicted) on drug charges during those 3 years; and social services failed to notify us of these activities because of "privacy" issues, which seems completely insane to me. Her arrests were public record but because we live in a different city, we did not find out about them until we hired a lawyer to try to get custody after the mother consistently denied us visitation, disobeying the court order. Ironically, when we kept inquiring about child custody, we were told that judges almost ALWAYS keep a young child with the mother as long as there are not neglect or drug issues - but because her arrests were in 3 different counties and her neglect removal of the other child was still yet in another county, somehow she slipped through the cracks. As the non-custodial parents, we were not even allowed to visit her pre-school. (And we do understand that in some cases, especially if the child has been awarded to one particlar parent because of abuse or other serious issues, this is necessary, but at no time did anyone say my husband was unfit; it was just an uphill battle to prove that a biological father should have been considered as equally as the biological mother for parenting a child.) Finding out about drug or neglect issues is considered a privacy issue until a parent is actually convicted and it becomes part of the public record.

There are many deadbeat, unconcerned dads out there but my husband was not one of them, and it really opened our eyes to how very difficult it is to secure custody of a young minor child from the biological mother, even when the biological father and stepmother have no drug/drinking issues/criminal records. Our private attorney was able to get a county judge to see that it made no sense to automatically assume that the child's mother was a better parent just because she had given birth.

Privacy laws are so awry that despite the fact that we had thousands of dollars taken from my husband's paycheck electronically, and there were never any allegations of abuse that would have necessitated privacy of the mother's whereabouts (we realize there are many cases like this), if we had not had been able to hire a lawyer, we may have taken even longer to get my stepchild. The mother refused to update her constant moves with us, which is why it took us so long to keep tracking her down - all banking was done virtually.

We have had a happy ending, finally now raising our precious little girl alongside our other children, but I shudder to think of other children living in poverty while the mother (or parent) is getting adequate income to support a middle-class, safe, lifestyle.

The government should make it MANDATORY that if a custodial parent consistently refuses to pay rent, that pro-rated part of the child support can be given directly to a landlord and utility company just for that purpose. Our child's mother was given a non-taxable income approximately TWICE the average family income of working families with TWO children in our state to support just this one child, yet she chose not to pay rent. She did, however, buy herself a new car and clothing, all the while (we found out later) returning for cash the clothing we sent monthly to my stepchild through a PO Box. We had to prosecute for her failure to obey visitation and even that was difficult, since she moved from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and each time she moved, we had to start filing charges with a new DA, only for her to move again.

Having this kind of system - direct debit from child support for rent/utilities before disbursing other cash - would also help those poor single parents (overwhelmingly women) who are NOT getting regular support from deadbeat non-custodial parents because it makes it easier to prove to a judge that the mother is truly using the money for needs, not desires as a deadbeat dad might claim. Few people can claim that housing, heat, and food are frivilous. The non-custodial parent would pay the same amount as before, but know that at least his/her child was sleeping in the same home.

Why can't our legislators consider this system?

Any ideas from custodial parents who have seen the flip side of this and think there might be other ways to assure consistancy in housing and other basic needs for the minor child?