Forced Child Support Hurts Women Too
When the economy crashed years ago back in late 2008, like everyone else I had a serious disruption in my income. My main business, my primary source of income at that time, lost 60% of its client base in less than three months. It was brutal.
During this time, I was actually late paying my child support / alimony payments for the first time in my life. As a result, the friendly government put a gun to my head and made me attend a “class” on “budgeting” for “divorced parents”. Never mind the fact that I actually teach budgeting to companies and individuals as a business consultant, and my lateness had nothing to do with my budgeting skills, but because of a historically significant system-wide economic failure that rocked the entire world. But hey, whoever said life wasn’t ironic?
So, irony: I’m sitting there in this “class” wearing my business suit along with a bunch of very rough-looking unemployed deadbeat dads (and two deadbeat moms) while being taught budgeting skills by a little old lady who made a fourth of my income and possessed about a twentieth of my business acumen. But hey, it was either go to the class or go to prison. Because The Government Is Here To Help.
More irony: As the little old lady is lecturing all of us on basic budgeting skills I had already mastered decades prior, I can’t hear a thing because I’m too busy checking out one of the deadbeat moms because she’s about 23 and smoking hot.
So during the milk-and-cookies break, I click out of business mode and into Blackdragon mode. I get up, pull off my tie and put it in my pocket, unbutton the top two buttons of my shirt, then walk over to little miss 23 year-old and say hi.
We talk and I do my usual thing. Soon, she’s relaying to me a very interesting story describing why the government was forcing her at gunpoint to take this “class”. She later relayed the story to the entire group. This was many years ago so my memory is hazy on the exact numbers, but the gist of the story is this.
Women Get Screwed Too
A few years back, she had a boyfriend. Like most people her age do, she stupidly had a child with him. Fortunately she was in the military, so she had an income that was enough to support the child. So far, so good.
However, being in the American military during the Bush/Obama era is a raw deal. She was suddenly called up to go to Iraq to go kill brown people because the neocons must rule the world. She didn’t want to go, but she had no choice, she was in the army. (Or was it the marines? Don’t remember. Women in the marines tend to be way hotter than women in the army. But I digress.)
Obviously her new baby couldn’t go with her, so the child went to the boyfriend while she served her 15 month tour of duty. Sad, but so far, so good.
Problem. While she’s gone, boyfriend decides she won’t make a good mother because she’s at war. I don’t know the details, but he files the proper paperwork and the government agrees. Because she’s thousands of miles away shooting at brown people, she’s a Bad Mother. Because she’s in the desert somewhere in Iraq, her ability to legally fight the process is severely hampered to say the least.
Long story short, government awards baby daddy sole physical and legal 100% custody. That means he’s in complete control of all decisions regarding raising the child, but she must now pay him child support. Fair? Of course not. This happens to men all the time. Interesting that now it was happening to a woman.
I’m not an expert on this next part, but when you’re in the military in a war zone, you get hazard pay, which is many times your normal pay. I think she said she was getting paid something like $80,000 a year. (Again, I could be wrong; some of you military guys may need to correct my numbers.) Whatever, it was a lot of money for an uneducated woman in her early twenties.
Child support payments are based on your current income. In most countries/states, it’s simply a calculation based on your income and possibly the income of the other parent. So her monthly child support was based on her current high hazard pay. The monthly checks she started sending to now ex-boyfriend to support a baby she couldn’t see and didn’t even have custody of were massive.
But at least she was able to afford the child support. She was making a lot of money and had no real bills to speak of during her time in Iraq.
Then her tour ended and she returned home. Her income instantly dropped to a third (or fourth?) of what it was. Suddenly she was unable to pay her child support payments. She started falling behind.
The government doesn’t like that. More importantly, they don’t care why you can’t pay. You pay, or you go to prison. Pick one, you greedy deadbeat. Don’t give us this “why” shit.
The nice, understanding government who is Here To Help Us garnished her wages, suspended her driver’s license, and hauled her into court multiple times. She had to have her new boyfriend drive her to the class because she was no longer allowed to operate a car. Needless to say, this also negatively affected her ability to earn money.
All because she couldn’t pay her artificially inflated child support to feed Dick Cheney’s neocon empire to support a baby she had no custody over and an ex-boyfriend who didn’t even work.
She tried to explain the above circumstances to the government, and she even had official government military records to back up everything she was saying. The government’s response? Fuck you. You pay, or you go to prison. We don’t care about why you can’t. We don’t care it wasn’t your fault. We don’t care you served your country. We don’t care. Pay your loser ex-boyfriend who stole your child while you were doing your duty. Or go to jail. Fucking greedy deadbeat. Don’t you know it’s All About The Children?
I don’t know what became of her after our very useful class. At the time of the class she was working on an “adjustment” where perhaps she would be allowed to pay a little less child support (though probably still more than she could afford).
Her story was very eye-opening for me. I had already heard of many such horror stories from dads, but this was the first time I had seen it affect a mom.
Child Support
Let me be clear. I am not against the concept of child support. I do believe and agree that you are 50% financially responsible for any child you bring into the world, at least barring very unusual circumstances. I’m happy to pay my child support every month because I love my children. Note I’m talking about child support here. I am not talking about alimony or spousal support…those I completely oppose. (I thought women were strong and independent and didn’t need free money from some guy they were married to years ago?!?)
What I am opposed to is the government gun to your head. I am opposed to government telling you exactly how much child support you will pay and when you will pay it and how you will pay it. I am opposed to the government being completely inflexible, bureaucratic, irrational, and downright evil when said child support cannot be paid for legitimate reasons.
Child support is fine. The gun to your head is not. I’ve heard horror stories that turn my stomach, and as you can see from the above example, even women are not immune.
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Although I totally see your point, without court involvement, what about parents who refuse to pay at all? Would there be any recourse for custodial parents in those situations? Or would child support be optional?
This happened a few years back. I found it interesting and on topic here.
Child support should be handled just like every other long-term financial transaction in society: a private contract between two parties. Man and woman write up whatever child support agreement they are both happy with, sign it, have babies, and then adhere to it. If one of them violates what they promised, the other can go to small claims court and then the government gets involved if necessary. In a society where this was the norm, couples could very cheaply (or even for free) download child support agreement templates from places like legalzoom.com.
For couples stupid or irresponsible enough to not write up a contract prior to a baby being born, either party could take the other party to small claims court and have a judge adjudicate. The legal standard for decisions in cases like this would be the 50% of the average cost of minimal middle-class child needs in the city in which the child was born. It would have nothing whatsoever to do with the man’s or woman’s incomes, the skill of their attorneys, or the opinions of politicians.
Again though, this would be the exception to the rule, as most people would sign contracts rather than go through this hassle.
I like the idea of a contract before the fact. That seems very sensible.
I like the idea of using stats for the actual costs of raising a child (absent other agreements) instead of basing it on income too.
One problem I see with agreements between the parents though is that courts view support as something they owe the child rather than each other. As a result judges overide them when they don’t like the terms. The stories I’ve read usually involve DIY artificial insemination where the parents agreed the man was nothing more than a sperm donor, but a judge later made him pay child support anyway.
I believe the reasoning in those cases is that the mom can’t waive the child’s rights, so biodad has to pay.
Correct, that’s a problem with the current system. The judge can do whatever the hell they want, and then when questioned about it spout off something about how It’s All About The Children.
That’s why in the case of no contract, the judge would simply enforce the city tables I mentioned above. He/she would have no authority to change things based on his/her emotions, biases, or political opinions.
In a free country (which this is not), judges simply enforce contracts and do little else.
BD,
As a fellow libertarian, I agree with you. But…
…Did you seduce the single mom?
Alas, I did not. Can’t win them all.
I am 100% against child support completely. If a man or woman have a baby with a spouse who bails they are the ones who should bare the burdens of their mistake, not have the government get involve. The government always ends up screwing people over and abusing their authority. Many times, a good portion of the child support payments women (or men) will actually receive, will not end up in the pockets of the children, but in the greedy ex-wife/ex-husband.
If we are going to get the government involved here are some improvements to the system I suggest:
1. Each parent will be required to have the children in their possession 50% of the time, unless the parent is considered abusive and convicted of child abuse/battery/etc, which is different situation.
2. All child support should be put into some special account where every purchase must be registered as a child support purchase. A government body, like CPS/IRS could come investigate any abuses being done by either party with child support account. The parent using the child support money will be required by law to notify the other parents paying the support of every purchase they make. Therefore, a night of wining and dining and taking trips to Florida with your new boyfriend/girlfriend will be considered abuse of child support account and result in criminal penalties.
3. If the other parents income ever is higher than the support paying parent’s income, then they will become the person who pays the child support payments. This is assuming a 50/50 possession time is followed.
I’m not against the two parties making up a written agreement. That is a good idea, but I am sure with all the crying and screaming victims, most obviously being female, will result in this type of agreement never holding much legal weight in court. Some bleeding-heart democrat somewhere will pass a bill making this type of agreement null and void.