Quite the contrary, I know there are many more that have it worse than I, and I have great sympathy for them and hope they will share their advice as I share mine.
But not having the worst story, does not make my story superfluous, its not a contest, its what I know, its what I can write about passionately and answer for personally.
Another issue is gender. I am an NCP father, and much of the problem is directed at father's and I use that as an example many times. But I have learned during this blog that there are indeed many female victims of the system. So I hope everyone can translate what I write to be gender neutral. I understand and fully recognize that female victims exist and their plight is equally bad and unjust.
Someone posted a comment to this post on their terrible experience, rather than simply responding to them by comment, I will post their entire comment here with some of my thoughts.
Hey, you think you were robbed?
Well yes I do, and I see you were too. The problem is too many people are robbed.
I did not even get child support for my son for 7 years,
Well that's one of the biggest problems, there are fathers going homeless paying child support to a mother who doesn't need it and there are other fathers with more than sufficient means not paying a dime. Kind of like our tax system.
most of which time I was unemployed due to the break down in our economy, loss of my main career (I had been a cop, but my son's father carefully crafted my demise there), and very little experience in any other type of work.
And that's another major problem, the divorce process can cripple someone's career in a variety of ways.
My average income during those 7 years was $15,000/ yr., and I had a second son to support, so I was supporting 3 people on $15K in the SF Bay Area. you do the math.
Well that's not much to live on in the first place and in the SF area that is a much larger problem with its higher cost of living.
The father meanwhile was earning 6 figures as a cop, and another $645,000 in business income from his P.I. business. We were denied our rights to the child support because the judge said I decided to not take it from him anymore????? and had signed away my rights. sorry, but in CA, I had no rights to that money, or the ability to "sign it away".
I have been amazed at the arbitrary nature, callous disregard, and apparent ignorance judges seem to display for the law they are charged with interpreting. When a judge became upset with a point I raised he threatened to arbitrarily double my child support to exceed my mortgage.
Under the Family Code, child support is the child's money and no one can deny that money to the child. It took 7, count them, seven years of litigation to finally re-instate the child support, but the judge denied any retroactive pay, and just ran the support from current day forward, at that point my son was 14!! I had finally re-trained myself in another legal field, as a paralegal, and was making decent money, so our monthly check was rather small.
Judges have an affinity for the status quo. Personally I think it is subconscious arrogance in not wanting to admit that they or another judge or lawyer may have been wrong. The idea of "temporary order" is a misnomer. Any order, once made, is likely to remain in effect no matter how ludicrous or obviously mistaken it may be.
When I finally hit a point where I could no longer work due to my cumulative injuries from being a police officer, I was approved for SSI, a measly check of $610 a month. My child support was reduced by half of what it had been, $1200, and my son got a measly $600 for the next 3 years from a father who never saw him once, and now made over $1,000,000 in personal and business income.
xx
My son should have been getting at least $2000 a month for all the years he was alive, and we got less than 1% of his father's income when state guidelines calls for it to be 25%. I paid for his braces, a $5,200 expense, all on my own, and was never reimbursed the %50 as per the law and our court order. I paid for all his glasses and basically all his medical care on my own. Again, never got the 50% reimbursement.
xx
And now who is paying for his college? Me! We will never see another penny from that father, not a dime, as the child support is cut off effective the day my son my son graduates from high school, June 14th.
xx
You like to bitch, I can see that,
Well if you want to call it that, but as I see it too many people are being too quiet about this bullshit, there should be more bitching, until this problem receives the attention it deserves.
but fathers are not the only ones who get robbed.
As I mention above, I don't always say it, but I do know it. It makes no difference what gender is robbed, it is bad. I just don't like to use dual he/she father/mother language. Sometimes I use gender neutral language like NCP.
Most of your problems are the opposite of mine as I am falsely labeled a deadbeat and you are the victim of a real deadbeat. I have heard some stories like this but can't write about them authoritatively. I encourage those, like yourself, who can to do that.
Our very different examples only go to prove one thing, the whole damn system is screwed up and it needs a major overhaul, no band aid will fix this hemorrhage of injustice (jqism).
Status: First Draft - Response being updated - Last Updated 08/23/08 2:30 AM
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