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Economy gives some dads a bad rap
Shadows of mother with children.
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Stacey Vanek-Smith: It seems like the recession and the unemployment rate are hitting every aspect of life these days. Divorce is no exception. As more parents feel a loss of income, many are asking family courts to adjust child support payments. The bad economy is also pushing some parents into payment delinquency, contributing to the problem of deadbeat dads.
From Boston, Monica Brady-Myerov reports.
Monica Brady-Myerov: When someone loses a job, the bills don't stop coming. Mortgage, car payments, health insurance and for some, child support. But Ned Holstein, president of Fathers and Families, a group that presents dads, says there's a big difference.
Ned Holstein: Everybody is struggling. But someone who has a child support order is the only person who's going to be put in jail, because they can't pay their debts.
That's why more parents who've lost their jobs are asking the courts to lower their child support payments. That's what's happening to Jim Feeney. He's a divorced father of four who lives on Cape Cod. Before he lost his job in January, he made about $85,000 a year. He's required to may $3,200 a month in child support and alimony. When he was laid off, he immediately asked the court if he could pay less.
Jim Feeney: First, I filed for unemployment, I filed for welfare, food stamps, because I had no income. I had no savings.
Feeney spoke about his case at a restaurant after his hearing, which he had to wait two and a half months for. The judge denied his request to lower his payments and after six months after not meeting them, Feeney was put in jail. After two days behind bars, he paid a $5,000 fine and was released. But his stint in jail didn't lower his child support obligations and the fines he's racking up because he's not paying.
Feeney: There's penalties to the state, there's penalties that go to my ex-wife, there's interest to the state, there's interest that goes to my ex-wife.
Feeney's former wife refused to comment for this story. But another ex-wife of another man who just lost his job does have something to say. She's Julie Baker, she's the primary care giver to two children, ages five and nine. Her ex was recently laid off.
Julie Baker: The first thing he said was, "I'll try to keep up the child support."
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Baker said her former husband has been a supportive dad who's always paid on time. But if the tables were turned:
Baker: If I lost my job, I can't say to the kids, "You know what? You can't have lunch today. You know what? I'm sorry that your shoes are too small."
And more out-of-work parents want to change their child support agreements. But just asking the court to lower your payments, because you lost your job, isn't always enough.
Divorce attorney B.J. Krintzman says the courts are slow moving.
B.J. Krintzman: They're not going to get very far if they go in that week and say, "I lost my job, so I can no longer pay." Usually there has to be some kind of period of time that's gone by, so the obligor has to show attempts to get a job.
Some judges are sympathetic and lower payments right away, because they know it's unlikely someone will get a new job quickly. But typically it takes six months for a judge to make a decision.
Holstein: And during those couple of months, you can be going broke in a hurry.
Ned Holstein of Fathers and Families.
Holstein: Then when you get the hearing, typically, the family court judges will not give you relief at the first hearing. They say, "Well, how do we know this is going to be long standing? You might get a job next week. Also, you've got some assets, you can pay it out of your assets. And so, I'll see you again in three more months."
But it's putting fathers who mean well and love their kids in jail, because they can't pay.
Krintzman: And this is not daddy jail; this is real jail.
But divorce attorney B.J. Krintzman says what ends up happening is dads borrow money from family and friends.
Krintzman: Usually it is very rare that someone stays in jail for 30 days. So they do find ways to find the money and pay up the back child support and get themselves out of jail.
And when they do get out of jail, they'll owe even more, because child support obligations don't stop while someone is behind bars.
In Boston, I'm Monica Brady-Myerov for Marketplace Money.
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There are a lot of different circumstances regarding child support. I do agree that women should take more responsibility for their decisions. I being a woman have supported both of my kids for the last 10 years. One of them by my current husband and another from another man. Never did I ask for child support from the other man. I have supported my daughter by myself with the help of my current husband. My husband does have to pay child support and it is extremely high for his income. I am a student and currently do not have an income so he is our main form of support. So is it fair that our children together have to suffer while his other children get to play in sports and do other activities. While she has a man there to help her with the bills and gets child support. She works and he works and she gets child support. She didn't graduate from high school. She hasn't gone to college. I'm trying to get a nursing degree to prove to my children that they can be whatever they want in life and if I can do it they can do it. In the mean time we have to struggle because of all the child support. We tried to get it reduced but were turned down...and this wasn't after him loosing his job this was after years of making a lower income because the construction industry came to a stand still after the crash of the economy. Yet the courts still take no pity on us or our children and will not lower his child support. He makes 11 dollars an hour and pays $900.00 a month. You do the math how is that fair. His ex wife had the nerve to wine to the court about how it is hard for her and she is a single mother and asked the judge not to lower his child support. Now how can you tell me its not all about the money. His ex wife ran to MS after being on drugs and having no home....mind you she did all of this illegally. She never asked the courts permission to leave. She ran because she knew we were going to take the kids from her. When we went to court the judge ruled in her favor because she cried a sad sad song about how she moved to change her life....for a better life for her kids. Men get the short end of the stick...a woman can be on drugs and not even taking care of her kids and still when the favor of the courts. This is ridiculous. I also agree with majority of women being rip off artists. His ex wife got my husband for back child support even though we had the kids half the time and he gave her money which she stated never happened so they went on her word. I hate child support I believe it is unfair and unjust. Why cant someone who pays child support write it off on their taxes?? Women get to claim the children each year that the child support pays for. There is just so many things not right about child support. I believe men need to stand up and fight for their rights which are clearly being violated.
1) Dads dont get runover by the system.They can shun whatever child they feel like. My ex got away with paying as less as possible the last 15 years. He is a correctional officer made 65000 that year and paid 300.oo a month for 15 years. How did he do it I will share. Adopt legally children from the new wife it counts as a hardship.
2) What the heck is money hungry? You NCP's here act like your paying 30,000 monthly like the stars?
3) Yes men all women have this secret code we shared in middle school that when we get older to trap the man we have been conditioned by some secret society to hate love and successful marriages with good well supported and nourished childre. We are told by the same society to get as much as we can so that we can have our nails done because that is whats important. We also love to make sure that you regret having children. no we dont want success we want you to suffer. We according to the secret society code also will push this to the point that you will hopefully commit suicide then well be happy.
4) When your money stops we women who are having our nails done stop feeding your children so please call CPS for neglect.
5)We women want to be used we like to be used as a piece of meat to have sex with like trash taking in all those STD's. We want to be the box you temporarily use until you get tired of it to trade it up for a new one. We will gladly accept being the second until you made up your mind for your chosen soulmate.
Please dont ever treat us as equals we hate that and probably will add that to the society rules to shun acknowlegement as a human. As a matter a fact we are waiting for you all to convert to Islam we like how they are treated. Please send us all over there leaving no women behind.
Theres more but I cant stop laughing.
Just one more thing hater men I hope this one thing that most of you get daughters and that they get wonderful supportive men like you.
In my 35 years on this earth, I have never posted a comment until now. I decided when I was about 12 years old that I would never have a wife or children. The women posting here are validating my decision, as women continue to do everyday. Something I've observed over time is that if the child support payments don't come or the child turns 18 and they stop coming, these malicious types of women (About 96.5 % of them, excluding babies in the womb and alzheimers patients) tend to end up destitute or insane. Most women are not good "big-picture" thinkers. Particularly the women who gleefully touts about her babies father becoming a Felon. "Yeah, he'll really get his act together and pay you that $5000 a month now." Better be carefull, ladies. What are you gonna do if he just commits suicide? You'd be amazed at what men will do; I had a friend who developed a treatable form of cancer at age 36. He decided just to put a bullit in his head, even though he could afford to pay both the child support and the medical bills. I realize now that it was the principal; he would rather be dead than continue to live supporting a child he didn't want who he never got to see and who was being trained from infancy to hate him. It's sad for the kid, but even more sad that she will blame her dead father and not her scandalous mother when she's out stripping and prostituting, charging $20 a "holler."
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This great story is over 2 years old, but continues to generate comments. Perhaps the best way to look at the issue is to start by understanding the financial and economic implications of the math behind the various support models. Here's an advanced calcultor for Michigan that explains far more than just the bottom line payment: www.childservicepolicies.com
I, the bitter infertile woman, often shake my head in sheer, unadulterated wonder at some of the women who are actually able to conceive. I wonder why them and not me?
I have a friend whose ex tricked him into getting her pregnant. Oh I know, I know, cue the "mothers" telling me off. "Well he should have done this, done that; kept it in his pants if he was not ready for the consequences; it takes two to tango, blah blah blah; all his fault, now he needs to accept the responsibility; deadbeat this, deadbeat that..." You know what? Here is my argument to that (and of course I expect mothers to discredit me here, being quite the entitled lot). Anyway, when two people who love each other make a monogamous commitment to one another, they tend to not use condoms; rather, the woman goes to the doctor and gets an I.U.D. or gets on the pill/shot. Hey, some women even have their tubes tied, but as there IS a way to verify that, I will not bring it into my argument. Anyway, I know of a disturbingly large amount of women who intentionally got themselves pregnant by "taking the pill," if you know what I mean (for those who did not catch on, the quotation marks indicate a form of sarcasm here). Or "getting the shot." Some women even cheek the pill when their partner wants to watch them take it for verification purposes, or find some other way to deceive him. Women can get creative because, as we have established, women are manipulative and spoiled, and will do whatever they can in order to get what they want, regardless of who has to go down in the process. Example: the woman receiving 3.5K from her ex who refuses to comment. I wonder why? What is she afraid of, other than being called out for being so heartless and insensitive?
No matter how badly you beg to disagree with me regarding this point, at least, I am right. End of story. The child support system will never be fair, just, and right until the right to choose lies with both parties. Back to the friend to whom I gave mention earlier, when he found out that she was pregnant, he begged her, pleaded with her, even fell to his knees in tears wanting her to terminate the pregnancy, or if she did not want to terminate, then adopt the child out to a family who (alike myself and my husband) is unable to have children. What did she do? She told him too bad. If he did not want to stay with her and be a father to their ill-conceived child, then she would go after him for every last dime that she could get from him. She even mentioned alimony, but thank God that they were not married. Remember, ladies, this is a woman who "forgot to get her shot," yet forged medical confirmation that she had gotten it using a former medical note and a scanner/Microsoft Word. It turns out that she had done that a few times until she got what she wanted. Yes, being an intelligent guy, he always wanted to make sure that she had had her shot, but there is only so much that a guy can do; better yet, there is only so much that he should HAVE to do. What does that say about these women, and why are we not frowning at their conduct? If you want to point fingers at "deadbeats," then let's begin with these "deadbeat" sorry excuses for human beings.
Now I know that some of you will say that he should have gone to the office with her to get it, but he works full-time and, at the time, was going to school (she has effectively ruined that for him for now). But, again, should a man really have to think that way? Have to all but stalk her to make sure that she is not lying? And again, what does that say about these women? Why do we never look at them in disgust like we do at the fathers who did not want to become fathers? Hey, maybe they wanted to wait until they were more stable and able to better provide for their children, or maybe they wanted to have their first child with someone whom they were sure that they were in love with, but now that first child, that special moment, was robbed from both him and his true soul mate, who can now never have that with him because of some selfish, spoiled woman (I have a girlfriend who got with a man in such a situation). Relationships are liabilities anymore, I swear.
So you tell me this. How is it right that the woman gets to decide whether or not she wants to become a mother, but the man does not get to decide whether or not he wants to become a father? How is it right that people like my friend, who wanted to go to medical school when he got out of university, can have their dreams and aspirations shattered by one BFP (big fat positive in the TTC community), yet the woman can decide both of their futures for them? Maybe she will give birth and go to school later if she wants to, or hey, maybe she will just drop out and go for indefinite child support/alimony/welfare. If you live in Oregon, then that is the ticket to the good life. Welfare moms here drive better cars than some people with decent jobs. Anyway, either way, the man gets screwed and has no say in his fate whatsoever. His only decision from then on is, "Will I fork over my hard-earned money to the witch, or risk going to jail?"
I hate it. It is the stupidest thing that I have ever heard of in my twenty-seven years of life, other than drugs and other crimes, of course; however, in my opinion, this is a crime against morals.
Having said all of this, of course I believe that when two people CONSCIOUSLY - operative word here, consciously - decide to bring a child into this world together, after having discussed it, and should they later split up, then child support should be due. But again, how is it fair that women have so much power whilst men are rendered completely helpless only because the baby is not in their body? Women can dangle their pregnancies and children over a man's head and ruin him if they want to, and they are the only ones who have a choice in the matter. I could care less that it is "YOUR body." It is also "HIS life." If you are so desperate for money/children, then how about you wait until you are capable of doing it on your own, since you do not seem to care enough about your partner to consider his opinion?
My final say here... My husband and I have known each other since we were fifteen years old. We are more in love today than we were then, of course, but the mutual respect that we have for one another has always, always been the same. We make decisions together. We planned out our lives together. We decided, together, to begin TTC at the age of twenty-one years old, just a few years before we were due to enter grad school. We cried together at each pregnancy that we - "we" - lost, from number one until number seven, and we grieve together that we will never have biolgoical children (adoption is not for everyone). I will tell you this, ladies. We are a unit, and that is how it should be. I have always so desperately wanted to experience pregnancy, childbirth, and the feeling that comes from holding your child for the first time, knowing that it was out of such a union that said child, a product of pure love between two people, was born. But it was he who approached me first and asked me to give him a child. If he would not have wanted children, then I never would have tried anything underhanded to get myself pregnant, thus giving him a reason to resent both myself and our child. Never.
Again, I wonder at some of the people who are blessed with fertility. It blows my mind.
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